Iphigenia in the Iliad and the Architecture of Homeric Allusion

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that the traditional narrative of Iphigenia's sacrifice lies allusively behind the opening scenes of the Iliad (1.8-487). Scholars have long suspected that this episode is evoked in Agamemnon's scathing rebuke of Calchas (1.105-8), but I contend that this is only one moment in a far more sustained allusive dialogue: both the ...read more

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Original Author Manuscript of an article published in TAPA 152.1 (2022) 55–101. Please contact
me for a correctly paginated offprint of the published version (thomas.nelson@classics.oxon.org)
Iphigenia in the Iliad and the Architecture of Homeric Allusion*
Thomas J. Nelson
Abstract: In this paper, I argue that the traditional narrative of Iphigenia’s sacrifice lies allusively
behind the opening scenes of the Iliad (1.8–487). Scholars have long suspected that this episode is
evoked in Agamemnon’s scathing rebuke of Calchas (1.105–8), but I contend that this is only one
moment in a far more sustained allusive dialogue: both the debate over Chryseis and her eventual
return to her father replay and rework the sacrifice story. The Iliad begins by recalling the start of
the whole Trojan war.
Keywords: Allusion, Homer, Iliad, Iphigenia, Opening, Structure, Tradition
It has long been recognized that Homeric epic manipulates mythic time in complex and
sophisticated ways, allusively reenacting events beyond the strict confines of its narrative.
1
The
start and end of the Iliad, in particular, abound with allusions to earlier and later moments of the
Trojan war story. The first half of the poem closely replays the opening stages of the war: the
catalogue of ships, the teichoscopia, the duel of Paris and Menelaus, the encounter of Paris and
Helen, the marshaling of troops and Pandarus’s truce-breaking—these all reperform acts that
logically “fit” the first, rather than tenth, year of the conflict.
2
In the second half of the poem,
meanwhile, the poet foreshadows what is to come: Patroclus’s death presages Achilles’ own,
Hector’s death serves as a metonym for the fall of Troy and the funeral games of book 23 prefigure
many later episodes of the tradition.
3
Within its own narrow chronology, Homer’s epic embodies
the whole Trojan war story.
* For useful feedback on earlier versions of this paper, I am very grateful to seminar audiences in Cambridge and
many generous readers. I am particularly indebted to Justin Arft, Elton Barker, Jonathan Burgess, Olivia Elder,
Alex Forte, Richard Hunter, Talitha Kearey, Adrian Kelly, Max Leventhal, George Pliotis, Henry Spelman, Henry
Tang, Matthew Ward, Alan Woolley and the editors, referees and copy editor of TAPA. The research for this
project was supported by Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
Unless otherwise noted, the Iliad is cited from Monro and Allen 1920; the Iliadic scholia from Erbse 1969–1988
and van Thiel 2014; epic fragments from West 2003 (GEF); Hesiodic fragments from Merkelbach and West 1967
(M-W); tragic fragments from Snell, Kannicht and Radt 1971–2004 (TrGF); and fragments of “Greek historians”
from Worthington 2007– (BNJ). All translations are my own.
1
Schein 1984: 19–28; Kullmann 2001: 388–89; Burgess 2006: 167–69; de Jong 2007. This phenomenon was
already recognized by Aristotle (Poet. 23.1459a34–36; Else 1957: 585–86) and Eustathius (Rengakos 2004: 292).
On my use of “allusion,” see below.
2
Bowra 1930: 110–13; Reinhardt 1938; Whitman 1958: 265, 269–70; Edwards 1987: 188–97; Taplin 1992: 83–
109; Hunter 2018: 71–75; Bowie 2019: 9–12. Cf. too Finkelberg 2002 on Iliad 7.
3
Achilles’ death: e.g., Burgess 2009: 72–97; Horn 2021. Hector’s death: e.g., Schein 1984: 24–25, 176;
Papaioannou 2007: 210–12. Funeral games: e.g., Whitman 1958: 263–64; Kullmann 1960: 333–35, 350, 356;

2
Iliad 1, however, is rarely—if ever—considered as part of this allusive scheme.
4
Most
scholars focus on how this book looks forward, not backward, setting the stage for the events that
follow: it introduces Achilles’ anger and Zeus’s promise to Thetis, two elements which together
propel the internal Iliadic narrative. There seems to be an implicit scholarly assumption that it is
only once the poem has been set on its own trajectory that echoes of earlier moments in the story
begin.
5
In this paper, however, I will argue that such allusive analepsis is active from the Iliad’s
very start. Already in book 1 we can identify the allusive reworking of a specific episode from the
larger Trojan war story: the sacrifice of Iphigenia. Scholars have long suspected that this event lies
behind Agamemnon’s scathing rebuke of Calchas (1.105–8), but this is usually considered an
isolated and passing reference, without any larger significance for the book or poem as a whole.
6
Here, by contrast, I intend to demonstrate a far more extensive and sustained allusion to the episode
than has previously been recognized. In particular, I will argue that both the debate over Chryseis
and her eventual return to her father replay the tale of Iphigenia’s sacrifice through a range of
thematic and structural allusions.
7
This argument—if accepted—is of considerable significance
for how we view the Iliad’s relationship to the wider epic tradition, as well as the allusive
architecture of the poem as a whole.
Homeric allusion is, of course, a theoretical quagmire. Various methodological approaches
compete in modern scholarship, especially surrounding the question of how meaning can be drawn
from repetitions in an oral-derived, formulaic tradition. While neoanalysts have traditionally
reconstructed specific lost poems as sources for the Iliad, oralists instead privilege the embedded
resonance of specific words or phrases based on their various uses elsewhere in archaic poetry
(“traditional referentiality”).
8
Attempts have been made to combine these approaches,
9
and in
Willcock 1973; Richardson 1993: 202–3; Rengakos 2007: 107–8; Forte 2017: 65–104. For allusions to the Trojan
horse at the end of the poem, see too Franko 2005.
4
See e.g., Tsagalis 2011a: 413, who specifies “Iliad 2–7” as the books which contain “indirect reverberation” of the
earlier parts of the war; cf. Whitman 1958: 269 (“Books III to VII”); Schein 1984: 19 (“Books 2–4”); Finkelberg
2002: 158 (“Books 2–7”).
5
The most notable exception remains Slatkin’s analysis (1991) of how Iliad 1 alludes to the wider relationship of
Thetis and Zeus, the role of Briareus and possible traditions about Achilles’ birth (esp. Il. 1.394–406), although
her focus is more on cosmic history and the divine succession myth than the immediate events of the Trojan war.
Some scholars also see a possible allusion to Zeus’s initial motivation for the war in the Iliadic proem (see § III
below with n126), but this is rarely considered part of the broader analeptic pattern of the following books.
6
See n78 below. Some of the further parallels that I explore here have been noted in passing by Aretz 1999: 51,
Scodel 2002: 106 and Currie 2015: 291–92, but no previous scholar has acknowledged the whole pattern or
considered its larger significance.
7
Throughout, I employ the phrase “Iphigenia’s sacrifice” as a shorthand to refer to the myth of Agamemnon’s
attempted sacrifice of his child, whether or not she was ultimately killed: see § I (E) below.
8
Neoanalysis: e.g., M. E. Clark 1986; Kullmann 1991; Currie 2016; Rengakos forthcoming. Traditional
Referentiality: e.g., J. M. Foley 1991, 1999; Kelly 2007a; Barker and Christensen 2008, 2020; J. M. Foley and
Arft 2015; Arft 2021.
9
E.g., Kullmann 1984; Danek 1998, 2016: 142 (“oral traditional intertextuality”); Reece 2011 (“neoanalysis with
an oral twist”). Cf. Rengakos 2020.

3
recent decades scholarly attention has shifted away from old questions of “textuality” to focus on
the precise mechanics of reference.
10
But even so, considerable disagreements remain.
My aim in this paper is to pursue a middle road between neoanalysis and traditional
referentiality, exploring how the Iliad alludes to what I propose was an established oral tradition
of Iphigenia’s sacrifice at Aulis. From an early date, the sacrifice story contained a number of core
and stable elements that would have been integral to any telling. It is this mythical fabula—a
distinctive and recognizable sequence of narrative events—to which a poet like Homer could
allude.
11
I intend to demonstrate how the Iliad interacts with this fabula by means of “motif
transference,” adapting, reworking and distorting the original Iphigenia sequence.
12
I will use the
language of “allusion” to refer to this process. By this, I do not mean to suggest that the Iliad is
interacting with a “fixed” poem, a “written text” or even a specific “oral text”;
13
my focus remains
on the reworking of a sequence of mythological motifs. But I use “allusion” to acknowledge a
sense of design in this process, even if it is only constructed at the level of audience reception: the
opening scenes of the Iliad evoke the Iphigenia story as a parallel and foil, a carefully curated
sequence for audiences to recognize.
14
In what follows, I begin by outlining the core elements of the Iphigenia fabula, drawing on
the evidence of the Cypria and other sources to highlight the crucial motifs of the tale (I). Using
this framework as a key, I then turn to Iliad 1 and explore how the poem’s opening allusively
replays and reworks the fabula of Iphigenia’s sacrifice (II). This detailed analysis will provide the
groundwork for the final section, in which I ask what this sustained motif transference adds to our
interpretation of the Iliad (III). As we shall see, this argument not only enriches our appreciation
of the poem’s opening, but it also expands our understanding of Homeric characterization,
structure and allusion.
I. THE FABULA OF IPHIGENIA
The sacrifice of Iphigenia was an old and well-established element of the Trojan war tradition.
Although it is not mentioned directly in either Homeric poem, the story featured already in the
10
Key recent interventions in the debate include: Burgess 2006, 2009: 56–71, 2012; Tsagalis 2008, 2011b, 2014;
Kelly 2012; Bakker 2013: 157–69; Currie 2016: 1–38, 259–62; Edmunds 2016; Barker and Christensen 2020: 11–
43.
11
For this use of fabula, see Burgess 2006: 160, 2009: 27, 2017: 53–55; Christensen 2019: 94–98. Cf. too the concept
of a Faktenkanon (“canon of facts”): Kullmann 1960: 12–13; Dowden 1996: 51–52. For ease of expression, I use
“Homer” throughout to refer to the constructed author of the Iliad, even if there are grave uncertainties regarding
the historicity of this figure; cf. Hinds 1998: 50 on the “intention-bearing author” as “a discourse which is good to
think with.”
12
On Homeric “motif transference,” see esp. Burgess 2006, 2009: 64–71; Kullmann 2015.
13
For the concept of “oral texts,” see Ready 2019: 15–74.
14
My use of “allusion” is thus comparable to Slatkin 1991 and Schein 2002. Contrast Currie 2016, who is more
inclined to see direct interaction with other “passages” and “texts.” On allusion and intention more generally, see
Hinds 1998: 47–50; Heath 2002: 59–97; Farrell 2005. For fuller discussion of my approach to early Greek allusion,
see Nelson forthcoming a § I.2.

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Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (where she is called “Iphimede”: fr. 23a.17–26 M-W) and the cyclic
Cypria (arg. 8 GEF).
15
Among archaic lyricists, it was treated by Stesichorus in his Oresteia (fr.
178 Davies-Finglass) and perhaps also by Simonides.
16
By exploring the details of these early
accounts, as well as the evidence of later tradition, we can tentatively outline the fabula of the
myth as it would have most likely been known to Homer and his archaic audiences.
17
Crucially,
this is not an attempt to reconstruct a single poem that allegedly preexisted the Iliad or to distill a
pure, “original” version of the myth (an impossibility in the context of flexible and multiform oral
traditions). Rather, my aim is simply to identify the core recurring elements of the Iphigenia story.
It is the repeated conjunction of these motifs in the same sequence that would have produced a
distinctive and recognizable Iphigenia narrative.
18
Of course, such an enterprise is complicated by our lack of direct access to pre-Homeric
tradition. We can only make use of post-Homeric evidence and thus face the risk that our sources
betray the influence of the Homeric texts themselves, or otherwise reflect post-Homeric
developments in the myth.
19
This is a crucial problem that affects any attempt to situate Homeric
poetry against its wider tradition. But even so, we should be wary of unduly exaggerating the
primacy of Homer at an early date: the evidence of both art and literature suggests that it was only
in the later sixth century that the Homeric poems began to dominate tradition.
20
Moreover, as
Jonathan Burgess has noted, limited possibilities for the diffusion of epics at an early date (either
through performance or literary circulation) mean that “relatively late poems are not necessarily
influenced by relatively early poems” and that chronologically “‘late’ poems may well represent
mythological traditions that precede ‘early’ poems.”
21
With appropriate caution, we can thus
employ post-Homeric evidence as our best available guide for potential pre-Homeric traditions.
22
The remnants and testimonia of the Epic Cycle are particularly valuable in this regard; I follow
those scholars who regard the Cyclic epics as manifestations of traditional material known to
15
Other possible references to events at Aulis have been identified in Hesiod fr. 204.105–39 M-W (Clay 2005: 32–
34) and in some exiguous hexameter fragments preserved by P. Oxy. 2513, which might come from the Cypria
(Janko 1982) or Eumelus’s Corinthiaca (Debiasi 2013).
16
See Simon. 315a Poltera = 608 frr. 1 + 2 PMG = P. Oxy. 2434, a papyrus fragment of what may be a Simonidean
commentary (cf. ὁ Σιμ[νίδης, l. 2) which mentions a female sacrificial victim (τὴν σφαζομέν[ην], l. 10),
maternal grief (ll. 13–16), a group of mourners (ll. 22–23), a killing conducted “to honor a deity” (ἐπὶ τιμῇ τοῦ |
δα[ονίο]υ, ll. 25–26) and a “grievous hurricane” (βαρεῖα λ- | α, ll. 29–30). These details all plausibly map
onto the Iphigenia myth: March 1987: 93–98; Poltera 2008: 562; contrast Finglass 2007a: 95. The myth might also
have been treated by the lyric poet Xanthus, an apparent source for Stesichorus’s Oresteia (699–700 PMG), and
also by Corinna: see D’Alessio and Prauscello (2021) on 690 PMG.
17
For a similar approach to the fabula of Achilles’ death, see Burgess 2009: 27–42, developed further by Horn 2021.
18
Compare Lévi-Strauss’s concept of “mythemes,” the “constituent units” of a mythic narrative (1958: 233–36); cf.
already Lévi-Strauss 1955.
19
Cf. Barker 2008: 46–55; Heslin 2011: 356; West 2013: 18–20.
20
Cf. Burgess 2006: 150, 2009: 2, citing his important 2001 study. Art: Lowenstam 1993, 1997; Snodgrass 1998;
Cairns 2001b: 6–7. Literature: Fowler 1987: 20–39; Burgess 2001: 114–31; Kelly 2015.
21
Burgess 2009: 3; cf. 2006: 153, 2019: 137–38.
22
Cf. the pragmatic assessment of Marks 2003: 223, who notes that post-Homeric evidence “still offers our best
approximation of the kinds of stories that would have been known to poets [...] and to their audiences.”

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Homer and his audiences, even if they were textualized at a later date.
23
But in handling both this
and other later material, we must still proceed with the utmost care and remain attuned to potential
inventions or post-Homeric receptions. Ultimately, certainty remains impossible, but with
sufficient circumspection—and with varying degrees of confidence—we can employ the evidence
of the Cycle and other sources as a general guide for the pre-Homeric Iphigenia tradition.
Following this approach, I have identified six separate elements of the Iphigenia fabula
(indicated below by the letters A–F), all of which—as we shall see—reverberate in the narrative
of Iliad 1.
(A) Agamemnon offends a deity and is punished
Agamemnon’s transgression
According to Proclus’s summary of the Cypria, when the Greeks had gathered at Aulis after the
aborted Teuthranian expedition, Agamemnon went hunting and killed a deer (καὶ τὸ δεύτερον
ἠθροισμένου τοῦ στόλου ἐν Αὐλίδι Ἀγαμέμνων ἐπὶ θήρας βαλὼν ἔλαφον, arg. 8 GEF). This
alone may be no crime (cf. Odysseus’s deer hunting on Aeaea, Od. 10.156–71), but Agamemnon
went on to boast that he surpassed even Artemis (ὑπερβάλλειν ἔφησε καὶ τὴν Ἄρτεμιν, arg. 8
GEF), a hubristic remark which stirred up the goddess’s anger (μηνίσασα δὲ ἡ θεός, arg. 8 GEF).
Many later accounts reflect this same combination of successful deer shooting and insolent
arrogance (Soph. El. 568–69; Callim. Hymn 3.262–63; Hyg. Fab. 98), and some even report the
contents of Agamemnon’s boast: “not even Artemis could have shot like that.”
24
From Proclus’s
summary, Agamemnon’s main transgression appears to have been his boastful claim to surpass
Artemis’s skill as an archer.
However, a further aspect of Agamemnon’s crime can be found in Sophocles’ Electra,
which renders the deer shooting itself an act of sacrilege. Electra reports that her father came across
the deer while sporting in Artemis’s sacred grove (θεᾶς | παίζων κατ᾿ ἄλσος, Soph. El. 566–67).
The beast was thus sacred to the goddess and by killing it Agamemnon committed an impiety.
25
This detail is recalled in a number of later versions.
26
It may simply be a post-Homeric accretion
to the myth, but it could also date back far earlier: Electra’s account certainly seems to signal a
debt to an older source with the “footnoting” ὡς ἐγὼ κλύω (“so I hear,” El. 566).
27
If so, it would
23
E.g., Nagy 1990: 72; Holmberg 1998; Burgess 2001; Finkelberg 2015: 127. Few fragments of the Cyclic epics
remain extant, so we are largely dependent on Proclus’s far-later prose summaries: see Barker 2008: 46–55; Currie
2016: 229–33. Despite their selectivity, these summaries still seem a generally reliable guide to the original poems:
Sammons 2017: 225–38.
24
Σ A Il. 1.108–9b; Σ Eur. Or. 658. Apollodorus’s Epitome features an elliptical form of the same expression: “not
even Artemis ... ” (οὐδὲ ἡ Ἄρτεμις, Epit. 3.21), which was apparently misunderstood and incorrectly expanded by
the Sabbaitic scribe: Frazer 1921: II 191n1; Davies 2019: 143.
25
Cf. Finglass 2007b: 268–69 on El. 566–67.
26
Cf. IA 185–86, 1544 (suggestive mentions of “Artemis’s grove”); Hyg. Fab. 98. The same detail is found in the
Homeric scholia (Σ A Il. 1.108–9b = Dictys BNJ 49 F 5, cf. Dictys 1.19), though with a she-goat in place of a deer,
an imperial adaptation: cf. Ptol. 150b; Cameron 2004: 148–49.
27
Thus Currie 2016: 140n183 (suggesting a reference to the Cypria). For the pervasiveness of such “footnotes” in
archaic and classical Greek poetry, see Nelson forthcoming a, forthcoming b.

6
have secured an underlying logic for the myth from an early date, offering a “close nexus of crime
and punishment: ‘pro cerva-virgo’ which is maintained in the Cypria’s account of Iphigenia’s
rescue: ‘pro virgine-cerva’” (see § I (E) below).
28
In any case, the essence of Agamemnon’s transgression is consistent across all sources: he
offended Artemis through some combination of boastful arrogance and a sacrilegious disregard of
the divine.
29
Agamemnon’s punishment
As a result of Agamemnon’s impiety, Artemis was angry and—so the Proclan summary
continues—stopped the Greeks from sailing by sending a storm (μηνίσασα δὲ ἡ θεὸς ἐπέσχεν
αὐτοὺς τοῦ πλοῦ χειμῶνας ἐπιπέμπουσα, arg. 8 GEF), which not only delayed the expedition,
but also risked its abandonment, a total mission failure.
30
This detail of the storm is attested
elsewhere as early as Hesiod’s Works and Days, where the Greeks are said to have gathered a large
army together at Aulis, waiting for a χειμών to pass (Αὐλίδος, ᾗ ποτ᾽ Ἀχαιοὶ | μείναντες
χειμῶνα πολὺν σὺν λαὸν ἄγειραν, Op. 651–52),
31
and it might also have featured in the Hesiodic
Catalogue, where a dramatic storm description follows the catalogue of Helen’s suitors and Zeus’s
plan to annihilate the demigods (fr. 204.124–29 M-W).
32
In addition, it recurs in many other
sources, including Aeschylus’s Agamemnon (188, 198–99, 1417–18) and Euripides’ Iphigenia at
Aulis (88, 352, 1323–24). In the former, Aeschylus may even play with his audience’s preexisting
knowledge of the episode: Calchas initially hopes that Artemis will not cause any adverse winds
(147–49), a fruitless hope that resonates ironically against the backdrop of tradition.
33
28
Thus Davies 2019: 143–44; cf. Hansen 2002: 55. I suspect that Agamemnon’s sacrilege featured in the Cypria and
was simply omitted from Proclus’s terse summary: cf. Zieliński 1925: 245–46; Fraenkel 1950: II 98n2; Jouan
1966: 266; Davies 2010: 334–35, 2019: 144.
29
For other later variants, see Eur. IT 15–25 on Agamemnon’s unfulfilled promise to sacrifice the most beautiful
thing born in a given year (cf. Cic. Off. 3.95) and Apollod. Epit. 3.21 on Atreus’s failure to sacrifice the golden
lamb (cf. Bremmer 2002: 26). Both appear to be later adaptations, but both still foreground the impiety of
Agamemnon’s household.
30
For Artemis’s anger, cf. too Soph. El. 570 (μηνίσασα Λητῴα κόρη); Ov. Met. 12.28–29 (iram ... deae); Hyg.
Fab. 98 (ira Dianae); Apollod. Epit. 3.21 (τὸ μηνίειν τὴν θεόν); Nonnus, Dion. 13.106 (θεὰ βαρύμηνις). Artemis’s
capacity for anger is visible elsewhere in the Iliad: she angrily kills Bellerophon’s daughter Laodameia
(χολωσαμένη, 6.205), sends the boar against Oeneus’s orchards for his failed sacrifice (9.533–42: χωσαμένη,
534; χολωσαμένη, 538), and kills Niobe’s daughters, while her brother angrily kills her sons (χωόμενος, 24.605–
7).
31
Cf. Scodel 2012: 504–5; Davies 2019: 145, citing Mazon 1914 ad loc. Contrast West 1978: 320 on Op. 652; Most
2018: I 141.
32
Cf. Clay 2005: 33. Note especially the violent wind (π]είτος Βορέαο περιζαμενές, 126) and swelling sea
(ο]εσκεν δὲ θάλασσα, 127, following Hirschberger 2004: 138 and Most 2018: II 260 in printing Beck’s
supplement: cf. Hirschberger 2004: 421).
33
Other mentions of Artemis’s storm include Callim. Hymn 3.228–32; Verg. Aen. 2.116; Ov. Met. 12.24–25; Sen.
Suas. 3.2; Apollod. Epit. 3.21; Paus. 8.28.4, 9.19.7; Σ A Il. 1.108–9b; Σ Or. 658. Some late sources talk of a
windless calm rather than a storm, but this likely results from a misunderstanding of earlier texts and interpreters’
“confusion between the holding back of the winds and the holding back of the fleet at Aulis”: Davies 2019: 144–
46 (quotation 146).

7
Few extant texts dwell on the effects of the Greek army’s detainment, but the fuller
description in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon gives a sense of the storm’s serious impact (Ag. 188–98):
εὖτ᾿ ἀπλοίᾳ κεναγγεῖ βαρύ-
νοντ᾿ Ἀχαιικὸς λεώς,
Χαλκίδος πέραν ἔχων παλιρρόχ-
θοις ἐν Αὐλίδος τόποις·
πνοαὶ δ᾿ ἀπὸ Στρυμόνος μολοῦσαι
κακόσχολοι, νήστιδες, δύσορμοι,
βροτῶν ἄλαι,
ναῶν <τε> καὶ πεισμάτων ἀφειδεῖς,
παλιμμήκη χρόνον τιθεῖσαι
τρίβῳ κατέξαινον ἄνθος Ἀργεί-
ων·
... when the Achaean army was oppressed by bad sailing weather which emptied their
stomachs, as they occupied the land opposite Chalcis, in the region of Aulis with its roaring
ebb and flow; and winds came from the Strymon, bringing unwelcome leisure, starvation
and bad anchorage, making men wander, and not sparing their ships or cables, but making
time seem twice as long—those winds wore down and shredded the flower of the Argives.
34
The chorus of Argive elders paint a vivid image of the Greeks’ mental and physical anguish: the
winds cause famine (κεναγγεῖ, 188; νήστιδες, 193), physical decay to the boats (195) and
psychological hardship as the days drag slowly by (παλιμμήκη χρόνον, 196).
35
The final image
of the “flower of the Argives” being shredded and worn down (τρίβῳ κατέξαινον, 197) is
particularly evocative of the distress inflicted by Artemis, which in at least one later version
explicitly includes a plague (Dictys 1.19).
We cannot be sure that such a description of the stranded Greeks’ suffering featured in the
Cypria or other early traditions of the myth, but it would certainly not have been out of place in
archaic epic. In the Odyssey, Odysseus and his men suffer similarly when they are trapped by
adverse winds on the Island of the Sun (12.325–34),
36
as do Menelaus and his comrades on Pharos
(4.351–69); in both cases, “hunger wore at their stomachs” (ἔτειρε δὲ γαστέρα λιμός, 4.369 =
12.332). Of course, the Odyssey is particularly preoccupied with food, hunger and feasting, but the
provision of the Greek army is a recurring concern throughout the Trojan war tradition, even in
the Iliad.
37
And the storm description of the Catalogue—whether or not it refers directly to Aulis—
similarly stresses the physical deterioration that the storm brings: it “wore down mortal strength
34
Translation adapted from Sommerstein 2008: 23.
35
The dragging, syncopated rhythms of 188 and 196 reflect this lingering malaise: see Raeburn and Thomas 2011:
89–90. A similar scene may have featured in Sophocles’ Iphigenia: one fragment complains of “useless leisure”
(εἰκαία σχολή, fr. 308 TrGF; cf. κακόσχολοι, Ag. 193).
36
Cf. Medda 2017: II 137, 139–40.
37
See Il. 7.467–75, 9.71–72; Od. 9.163–65; cf. Kelly 2008: 10–12. Later, cf. Thuc. 1.11.

8
and the fruit was diminished” (κεν δὲ μένος βρότεον, μινύθεσκε δὲ καρπός, fr. 204.128
M-W). In addition, famine appears to have been a major theme in a later episode of the Cypria,
when the starving Greeks look to the help of Anius’s daughters (fr. 26 GEF). This later famine in
Troy and the earlier one at Aulis would have formed a natural narrative doublet, a common feature
of Cyclic and Homeric mythmaking.
38
It is thus likely that Artemis’s punishment not only
frustrated the progress of the Greeks’ mission, but also inflicted physical hardship upon them.
(B) Calchas discloses divine displeasure and proposes a solution: Agamemnon must give up
a prized woman from his possession
When the Greeks could not resolve their predicament, they turned to the prophet Calchas for help.
According to Proclus’s Cypria summary, he “told them about the wrath of the goddess and
instructed them to sacrifice Iphigenia to Artemis” (Κάλχαντος δὲ εἰπόντος τὴν τῆς θεοῦ μῆνιν
καὶ Ἰφιγένειαν κελεύσαντος θύειν τῇ Ἀρτέμιδι, arg. 8 GEF). This detail remained a permanent
fixture of the Iphigenia story: it appears in many other literary sources,
39
and is also reflected in
the prominent position which the seer plays in the iconographic tradition.
40
Early sources are far less forthcoming about how Agamemnon reacted to Calchas’s
prophecy. This is unsurprising: it is well known that Proclus’s summaries of the Epic Cycle
downplay the significance of character speech, making it very difficult to determine what role it
played in any specific episode.
41
Even so, based on Agamemnon’s characterization in the larger
epic tradition and the inevitable emotions of such a fraught situation, it is plausible that he would
have reacted with an impulsive outburst of anger.
42
Later accounts provide some support for this
hypothesis. Hyginus explicitly says that Agamemnon “began to refuse” as soon as he had heard
the proposed solution (re audita Agamemnon recusare coepit, Fab. 98; cf. Dictys 1.19). Many
other sources focus on his mental strain in the situation: the sons of Atreus could not hold back
their tears (δάκρυ μὴ κατασχεῖν, Aesch. Ag. 204), while Agamemnon only acted “against his will,
after much resistance” (βιασθεὶς πολλά τ᾿ ἀντιβὰς μόλις, Soph. El. 575) and “through much
necessity” (διὰ τὴν πολλὴν ἀνάγκην, Σ A Il. 1.108–9b). Only Aeschylus’s Agamemnon offers
an alternative picture: the chorus claim that Agamemnon “blamed no prophet” (μάντιν οὔτινα
38
On Cyclic doublets, see Sammons 2017: 101–25, esp. 101–2 on another instance in the Cypria: the paired
prophecies of Helenus and Cassandra (arg. 1d GEF). On Homeric doublets, see Fenik 1974: 131–232; Kelly 2007b.
39
Aesch. Ag. 198–204; Eur. IT 16–24, IA 89–93, 358–60, 879–81, 1262; Ov. Met. 12.27–29; Sen. Suas. 3.4; Hyg.
Fab. 98; Apollod. Epit. 3.21; Σ A Il. 1.108–9b. Only Dictys contradicts this tradition: an inspired woman—not
Calchas—reveals the need to sacrifice Iphigenia (mulier quaedam deo plena, 1.19). This imperial innovation recurs
in George Cedrenus’s Synopsis of Histories (1.219), combined with the traditional story: Calchas initially proposed
the sacrifice, but Agamemnon refused to act until an inspired woman agreed with him; this may well represent
Dictys’s original version: Dowden 2008 on F 5.
40
See Saladino 1990.
41
Sammons 2017: 230–31.
42
Cf. West 1979: 5 = West 2011–2013: II 221: “we may take it as certain that Calchas’ exposition of the cause and
cure of Artemis’ anger in that epic [sc. the Cypria]—in any epic—was followed by a speech from Agamemnon
similar in tone to Il. 1.106 f.” For Agamemnon’s Homeric characterization, cf. Porter 2019.

9
ψέγων, Ag. 186). But this unique variant is most likely a pointed departure from earlier tradition,
designed to downplay Agamemnon’s individual imprudence and accentuate his role as a victim
within the larger Oresteia narrative.
43
In any case, the emphatic assertion that Agamemnon
“blamed no prophet” seems to presuppose preexisting traditions in which he did precisely that.
44
Just as Aeschylus’s Calchas hopes against tradition for no adverse winds (Ag. 147–49), so too here
I believe it is better to take the chorus’s statement as an attempt to rewrite the mainstream tradition.
Even in this sole exception, we find a nod to Agamemnon’s traditionally angry response.
(C) Achilles loses a potential bride
Once Agamemnon agrees to the proposed sacrifice, the Greeks send for Iphigenia and justify the
summons under the pretext that she is going to marry Achilles. This detail features already in the
Cypria (arg. 8 GEF) and likely also appeared in Stesichorus’s Oresteia (fr. 181a.25–27 Davies-
Finglass).
45
Thereafter, it recurs frequently in art,
46
Attic tragedy
47
and later sources.
48
Its fullest
exposition comes in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis (98–105, 358–65, etc.), where we also witness
Achilles’ response to Agamemnon’s ploy: he criticizes the king’s conduct (μέμφομαι, 899) and
complains that he has committed hubris against him (ὕβριν ἐς ἡμᾶς ὕβρισ’ Ἀγαμέμνων ἄναξ,
961).
49
Initially, he also refuses to accept the king’s decision and plans to prevent the sacrifice,
even threatening to kill Agamemnon and Menelaus with his sword (970–72; cf. 932–69, 1360–61,
1365, 1426–27). Agamemnon’s actions not only deprive Achilles of a potential bride, but also
frustrate and anger him. In Lycophron’s Alexandra, Achilles reacts to the loss of his wife
(δάμαρτα, 190) by lamenting alone on the seashore, a display of extreme grief (192–95). Given
Achilles’ propensity for anger and excessive emotion elsewhere in archaic epic, it is plausible that
such reactions would have already featured in the traditional fabula of the story from an early date.
43
Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy foregrounds the theme of inherited “ancestral fault,” rather than the individual sins
of Agamemnon: Gagné 2013: 394–416.
44
For this allusive acknowledgement of a rejected variant, cf. Pind. Ol. 1.55 (the metaphor of “digesting” evokes the
traditional version of the Pelops myth that Pindar rejects: Griffith 1990: 200); Eur. El. 518–47 (Electra pointedly
snubs the recognition tokens of Aeschylus’s Choephoroi: Torrance 2013: 14–33); Ciris 484–86 (Amphitrite
explicitly dismisses a variant version of Scylla’s metamorphosis [into a fish]: Lyne 1978: 299).
45
See Bonnechère 1994: 42n106; Davies and Finglass 2014: 502, 510.
46
See, e.g., a lēkythos by Douris (Palermo, c. 470 B.C.E.; LIMC s.v. Iphigeneia, no. 3): Iphigenia is led forward by
the hem of her cloak and lifts her veil in a familiar bridal gesture (cf. Jenkins 1983: 141; Prag 1985: 61; Kahil and
Linant de Bellefonds 1990: 709–10). See Jouan 1984: 65–66 for other artistic echoes of the promised marriage.
47
Soph. Iphigenia fr. 305 TrGF; Eur. El. 1020–22, IT 24–25, 213–17, etc. See too the allusions at Aesch. Ag. 227,
239 and 1523–24 (Cunningham 1984; Armstrong and Ratchford 1985; Chong-Gossard 2008: 229n31; Raeburn
and Thomas 2011: 92 on 227, 227 on 1523–24). This narrative detail resonates with the common tragic motif of
“marriage to Hades” (Seaford 1987: 108–10).
48
Petr. Satyr. 59.5; Hyg. Fab. 98; Apollod. Epit. 3.22; Dictys 1.20; Nonnus, Dion. 13.109–12. Lycoph. Alex. 186–
201 pictures Achilles as a doting husband who spends five years searching for Iphigenia after her disappearance.
49
See H. P. Foley 1982 on the drama’s blurring of marriage and sacrifice. The authenticity of many parts of IA is
hotly debated (see Page 1934; Stockert 1992: I 63–87; Kovacs 2003; Gurd 2005). I approach this issue with a
cautious tolerance (cf. Collard and Morwood 2017: I 58–59) and treat the whole extant play as evidence for the
Iphigenia tradition.

10
(D) Odysseus collects and brings this woman to her father
Proclus’s terse summary of the Cypria does not specify who collected Iphigenia and brought her
to Aulis: the Greeks simply send for her (μεταπεμψάμενοι, arg. 8 GEF). But in later tradition, this
role is almost always assigned to Odysseus. In the prologue of Euripides’ Iphigenia among the
Taurians, Iphigenia herself reports that she was taken from her mother “through the wiles of
Odysseus” (μ’ Ὀδυσσέως τέχναις | μητρὸς παρείλοντ’, IT 24–25), and we know that this version
was dramatized in Sophocles’ Iphigenia, which included a conversation between Odysseus and
Clytemnestra (fr. 305 TrGF). The same version is also found in the iconographic tradition and later
literary sources, with Odysseus collecting Iphigenia alone or in partnership with another.
50
Despite the near uniformity of tradition, however, two Euripidean plays offer slight
variations, but as with Aeschylus’s “blamed no prophet,” these seem to be pointed divergences for
rhetorical effect. In the Electra, Clytemnestra claims that her husband “went off, leading Iphigenia
from home to the harbor at Aulis” (ᾤχετ᾿ ἐκ δόμων ἄγων | πρυμνοῦχον Αὖλιν, 1021–22). In
defending her murder of Agamemnon (1011–50), it is rhetorically advantageous for her to focus
solely on Agamemnon’s culpability, without a diluting reference to the involvement of others.
51
In Iphigenia at Aulis, meanwhile, Clytemnestra herself escorts Iphigenia to the Greek camp (414–
19, 454–59, etc.), but this is essential for the drama’s larger plot: the emotional confrontation of
husband and wife on stage would not be possible were Odysseus to play the middleman.
52
These
two outliers are thus fully accounted for by their context; in each case, Euripides has good reason
to downplay Odysseus’s usual role. Moreover, Euripides seems to signpost his innovation in
Iphigenia at Aulis: Clytemnestra claims that it is “no wonder” (οὐ θαῦμα) that Achilles does not
recognize her because they have not met “before” (πάρος, 823–24), a claim that metapoetically
acknowledges the novelty of Clytemnestra’s presence in Aulis.
53
The drama also allusively nods
to Odysseus’s expected participation: the hero is one of the few Greeks who has knowledge of
Agamemnon’s deception (107, 524), and Achilles still suspects that Odysseus will lead the group
to bring Iphigenia to the altar (1362). Even this Euripidean exception thus seems to presuppose
and allude to Odysseus’s involvement.
50
Odysseus alone: Dictys 1.20; Nonnus, Dion. 13.109–12; LIMC s.v. Iphigeneia 39. With Talthybius: Apollod. Epit.
3.22 (cf. Ταλθύβιε κῆρυξ, adesp. fr. 663.4 TrGF). With Diomedes (a common partner in crime): Hyg. Fab. 98;
LIMC s.v. Iphigeneia 38 (as commonly identified). Douris (n46 above) pictures Teucer (identified by an
inscription) leading Iphigenia alongside at least one other man (perhaps Odysseus?); Gantz 1996: 584 suggests
that Teucer’s presence symbolizes the whole army’s support for the sacrifice.
51
In any case, the emphasis on Agamemnon’s agency is fully compatible with Odysseus acting on his instructions:
cf. the insistence in Iliad 1 that Agamemnon took Briseis from Achilles “himself” (αὐτός: 1.137–39, 184–85, 324–
25, 356, 507), although he actually sent Talthybius and Eurybates to do the dirty work (1.318–48).
52
Cf. Parker 2016: 60; Collard and Morwood 2017: I 4. For other Euripidean adaptations of tradition in IA, see
Radding 2015.
53
Cf. too Agamemnon’s emphasis on the “reasonableness” of Clytemnestra’s presence (εἰκότως), despite the fact
that she was not summoned (ἄκλητος), which both flags and justifies this innovation (IA 457). For such
signposting of innovation in (especially Euripidean) tragedy, cf. McDermott 1987, 1991; Cole 2008; Torrance
2013: 222–27.

11
The major difficulty here, however, is the fact that Odysseus’s role is first explicitly
attested only in fifth-century Attic tragedy, a genre which frequently depicted the hero as a
villainous trickster and demagogue.
54
One might thus wonder whether his involvement in the
sacrifice was a tragic invention, designed to further blacken his character. We do not have the
evidence to disprove this possibility outright, but even so, Odysseus’s central role in collecting
Iphigenia fits very plausibly into wider patterns of the epic Trojan war tradition. From the evidence
of the Iliad and Epic Cycle, it is clear that delegation is Agamemnon’s usual modus operandi:
within the Iliad, he sends the heralds Talthybius and Eurybates to take Briseis from Achilles (Il.
1.318–48), delegates the initial prewar recruitment of Achilles to Nestor and Odysseus (Il. 9.252–
59, 11.765–90; cf. Cypr. fr. 19 GEF) and has others speak on his behalf in the embassy to Achilles
(Il. 9, cf. esp. 9.372–73).
55
The same process is also visible in the Cyclic tradition of the army’s
initial mustering: according to Proclus (Cypr. arg. 4–5 GEF), Menelaus, Nestor and Palamedes
went to recruit Odysseus in the Cypria,
56
while Apollodorus later reports that Agamemnon sent a
herald to recruit each king (Epit. 3.6).
57
Only in the Underworld scene of Odyssey 24 do we hear
of Agamemnon’s personal presence on such a mission (when recruiting Odysseus: 24.115–19),
but this seems to be a pointed exception, designed to silence and efface Palamedes’ traditional
involvement in the episode.
58
Given the well-established pattern of Agamemnon’s delegation, it is
thus unlikely that the king was thought to collect his daughter himself in the archaic tradition.
Odysseus, by contrast, is frequently involved in such missions. In the embassy of Iliad 9,
he emerges as the clear leader of the group: although Nestor had asked Phoenix to take the lead
(ἡγησάσθω, 9.168), it is Odysseus who “leads the way” to and from Achilles’ hut (ἡγεῖτο, 9.192;
ἦρχε, 9.657), who speaks first on arrival (intercepting Ajax’s nod to Phoenix: 9.223–24) and who
is called upon to report the outcome of the embassy by Agamemnon (9.673). In addition, he is
involved in many other missions that require cunning or deception, such as the Doloneia (Il. 10),
his infiltration of Troy in disguise (Od. 4.240–58; Il. Parv. arg. 4b–d GEF) and the theft of the
Palladium (Il. Parv. arg. 4e GEF). Odysseus was thus the natural agent to fulfill Agamemnon’s
will, especially given the trickery involved in the Iphigenia story.
59
(E) Sacrifice is performed at the altar
54
See Stanford 1963: 102–17; Blundell 1987; Worman 1999; Montiglio 2011: 3–12.
55
Nestor ultimately chooses the members of the embassy (9.167), although Phoenix later claims that Agamemnon
did himself (κρινάμενος, 9.521).
56
Cf. Heubeck 1992: 372–73; West 2013: 102.
57
Cf. Apollod. Epit. 3.9: Menelaus, Odysseus and Talthybius go to Cyprus to recruit Cinyras, the local king who
offers a gift of breastplates to the pointedly “absent” Agamemnon (Ἀγαμέμνονι ... οὐ παρόντι); cf. Il. 11.20–23
for this gift. The episode likely featured in the Cypria: cf. Frazer 1921 II 179 n3; Sammons 2017: 90.
58
Cf. West 2014: 299 with n244; Nelson forthcoming a § III.2.3. For Palamedes’ involvement elsewhere, see Cypr.
arg. 5b GEF; Accius, Ajax 109–14 (= Cic. Off. 3.98); Ov. Met. 13.34–42; Lucian, De domo 30; Philostr. Her. 33.4;
Σ Soph. Phil. 1025; Serv. on Aen. 2.81; Σ Stat. Achil. 1.93–94; Myth. Vat. 1.35, 2.228; Tzetz. on Lycoph. Alex.
384–86, 815.
59
Later accounts frequently stress Odysseus’s wiles: Ὀδυσσέως τέχναις (IT 24); astu | decipienda (Ov. Met.
13.193–94); Ὀδυσεὺς ... δολοπλόκος (Nonnus, Dion. 13.110); cf. δολίαν ἄτην (Aesch. Ag. 1523).

12
Once she has been collected, Iphigenia is delivered to her father in Aulis and placed on the altar,
the consistent site of her sacrifice throughout tradition in both literature and art.
60
Proclus again does not specify who performs the sacrifice: the Greeks in general simply
“try” to sacrifice her (ἐπιχειροῦσιν, arg. 8 GEF). Such imprecision is matched by our other earliest
sources (Hes. fr. 23a.17 M-W; Pind. Pyth. 11.22–23), but in later tradition, it is almost always
Agamemnon himself who performs the sacrifice, with Calchas assisting in the preliminary
rituals.
61
In many tellings of the story, however, Iphigenia is not actually sacrificed: she is replaced
(usually by a deer) and instead whisked away to become immortalized or appointed as a priestess
in Tauris. This version is already found in the Cypria (deer substitution and conveyance to Tauris:
arg. 8 GEF), the Hesiodic Catalogue (replacement by an eidōlon and immortalization as “Artemis
Einodia”: fr. 23a.17–26 M-W) and Stesichorus’s Oresteia (transformation into Hecate: fr. 178
Davies-Finglass).
62
The antiquity of the motif is further suggested by underlying parallels with
cultic rituals at Brauron and Mounychia, as well as the binding of Isaac in Semitic tradition; such
ritual substitution was not alien to ancient thought.
63
I thus consider it likely that Iphigenia’s
substitution was an integral part of the myth from the start. By contrast, in tragedy and other later
sources, the lack of substitution seems to be a pointed departure to accentuate the horror of
Agamemnon’s actions, especially in the context of justifying his later murder by Clytemnestra.
64
60
E.g., βωμῶ[ι] (Hes. fr. 23a.17 M-W); ὕπερθε βωμοῦ (Aesch. Ag. 232; cf. βω- | μοῦ, 210–11); ὑπερτείνας πυρᾶς
(Eur. El. 1022), ὑπὲρ πυρᾶς (IT 26), πρὸς βωμὸν θεᾶς (IA 1555), βωμοῦ θεᾶς (IA 1568); Triviai virginis aram
(Lucr. 1.84; cf. ante aras, 1.89; ad aras, 1.95); ante aram (Ov. Met. 12.31); τῷ βωμῷ (Apollod. Epit. 3.22);
παρὰ βωμῷ (Nonnus, Dion. 13.106). In iconography, the presence of the altar distinguishes Iphigenia’s sacrifice
from that of Polyxena (on Achilles’ tomb): Prag 1985: 61, 65. See e.g., LIMC s.v. Iphigeneia 1, 3 and 4.
61
Thus Séchan 1967: 372–74; Bremmer 2002: 30–31; contrast Robbins 1986: 2, 8–9nn13–14. Agamemnon: Aesch.
Ag. esp. 209–10, 224–25; Eur. El. 1020–23, IT 360, 565, 784–85, possibly adesp. fr. 73 TrGF; Varro, Sat. Men.
frr. 94–95 (cf. Cèbe 1975: 433–34); Lucr. 1.99; Cic. Off. 3.95; Hor. Sat. 2.3.199–207; Apollod. Epit. 3.22; LIMC
s.v. Iphigeneia 11, 37. For Calchas’s involvement, see P. Oxy. 2513.16 (where Agamemnon seems to be sitting to
one side: ἧστ[ο ἄν]αξ ἀνδρῶ[ν Ἀγαμέμνων]) and LIMC s.v. Iphigeneia 4, 38, 40–47 (Calchas cutting Iphigenia’s
hair before the sacrifice: Löwy 1929: 35). At IA 1578–89, the sacrifice is accomplished by a priest, although it is
earlier assumed that Agamemnon would kill Iphigenia himself (e.g., IA 873, 1177–78), perhaps “a reminder of the
common tradition” (“un souvenir de la tradition commune”: Jouan 1984: 63; cf. Séchan 1967: 374: “un témoignage
de la persistance de la tradition ancienne”).
62
For discussion, see Lyons 1997: 143–68. I am unconvinced by Solmsen 1981, who considers the Catalogue verses
an interpolation (cf. the caution of Hughes 1991: 84–85; Lyons 1997: 142n26); compare and contrast Ormand
2017. The Hesiodic description of Artemis as [ἐλαφηβό]λς (“deer shooting,” fr. 23a.21 M-W) may also evoke
the deer substitution: cf. March 1987: 89. For other mentions of the substitution, see Eur. IA 1581–89, IT 28–30,
fr. 857 TrGF; Lycoph. Alex. 190–91; Ov. Met. 12.32–34, Trist. 4.4.67–68, Ep. Pont. 3.2.61–64; Hyg. Fab. 98; Juv.
12.119–20; Nonnus, Dion. 13.104–19; Σ A Il. 1.108–9b; LIMC s.v. Iphigeneia 11, 12, 13, 50, 51. Cf. too other late
variants involving a young bull (μόσχον, Nicander, Heteroeumena fr. 58 Gow-Scholfield), bear (ἄρκτον,
Phanodemus, BNJ 325 F 14), and even an old woman (γραῦν, Tzetz. on Lycoph. Alex. 183, cf. Alex. 196). Dictys
1.22 rationalizes the substitution.
63
Brauron and Mounychia: Henrichs 1981: 198–208; Lloyd-Jones 1983: 91–96; Dowden 1989: 9–47; Bonnechère
1994: 38–48. Isaac (Genesis 22): Miliett 2007; Apergis 2017: 63–113. The Iliad itself may presuppose such ritual
substitution with the language of the θεράπων: Nagy 1979: 33, 292–93.
64
E.g., Aesch. Ag. 104–249, 1525–29, 1555–59; Pind. Pyth. 11.22–23; Eur. El. 1020–23. Cf. the apparent tragic
innovation of Medea’s filicide, whether by Neophron or Euripides: Mastronarde 2002: 50–53, 57–64; Mossman
2011: 9, 23–28. Lucretius also deploys the myth to emphasize the impiety of religion (1.82–101: Perutelli 1998;

13
Ultimately, however, whether she is killed or whisked away, the attempted sacrifice always has a
grim outcome for Agamemnon and his family: the loss of Iphigenia.
(F) After the sacrifice, the Greeks receive a favorable wind from the offended deity and sail
to Troy
After the sacrifice is complete, Proclus’s summary of the Cypria continues by claiming that the
Greeks “then sail to Tenedos,” embarking on their journey to Troy (ἔπειτα καταπλέουσιν εἰς
Τένεδον, arg. 9 GEF). The sacrifice succeeded in appeasing Artemis, who quelled her angry storm
winds. But Artemis did not just calm the storm; she also seems to have assisted the Greeks’ onward
journey to Troy. In some later sources, we explicitly hear that she provided a fair breeze. In
Iphigenia at Aulis, for example, Calchas specifies that Artemis has gladly received the sacrifice
and “grants us a fair voyage to attack Troy” (καὶ πλοῦν οὔριον | δίδωσιν ἡμῖν Ἰλίου τ᾿
ἐπιδρομάς, 1596–97), fulfilling Achilles’ earlier prayer for safe sailing (1575–76).
65
This detail is
not explicitly attested in any extant archaic source, but it fits well with Artemis’s larger association
with seafaring and seems to be reflected in one of the opening hymns of the Theognidea (11–14).
66
In these verses, the speaker calls on Artemis for protection from death (presumably on a sailing
voyage: κακὰς δ᾿ ἀπὸ κῆρας ἄλαλκε, 13)
67
and recalls how Agamemnon dedicated a temple to
her “when he was about to sail on his swift ships to Troy” (ὅτ᾿ ἐς Τροίην ἔπλεε νηυσὶ θοῇς, 12).
Given the explicit Trojan war context, Aulis is the most likely setting for this dedication,
68
and the
implication is that Artemis should protect the speaker’s voyage just as she did Agamemnon’s.
Taylor 2016: 145–49; Brown 2019). Notably, even Aeschylus’s account leaves open the possibility of substitution:
the chorus claim they did not see what happened next (Ag. 248–49).
65
Cf. too Ov. Met. 12.37 (ventos a tergo); Paus. 9.19.7 (ἀνέμου ... οὐρίου); Nonnus, Dion. 13.113 (πομπὸς ἀήτης);
Eust. Il. 59.45 = 1.95.25 van der Valk (εὔπλοιαν).
66
Artemis’s connection with the wilds extended to the “fishy sea” (πόντός τ’ ἰχθυόεις, Hom. Hymn 27.9). Besides
Thgn. 11–14, the evidence for her association with seafaring is most clear in Hellenistic sources: Callimachus
describes her as a “guardian of harbors” (λιμένεσσιν ἐπίσκοπος, Hymn 3.39; λιμενοσκόπε, 3.259) and Neleus’s
guide on his voyage to found Miletus (Hymn 3.226–27); Apollonius calls her a “protector of ships” (Νηοσσόον,
Argon. 1.570); and one Delian inventory from 229 B.C.E. includes “steering oars and an old anchor” among gifts
at the “Artemision on the Island” (πη]δάλια καὶ ἄ[γκυρα] παλα[ιά, ID 320 B.75 Dürrbach). Hesychius preserves
local cult titles that also evoke seafaring, such as Ἐκβατηρία at Siphnos (“Goddess of disembarkation,” ε 1288
Latte-Cunningham) and Εὐπορία at Rhodes (“Goddess of fair travel,” ε 7079 Latte-Cunningham).
67
Cf. Labarbe 1993: 32–33, noting that κήρ can refer to death at sea already in Homer (Od. 11.398–400), and that
other passages of the Theognidea evince a fear and suspicion of the sea (Thgn. 175, 667–82, 1375–76).
68
Cf. Dion. Calliphon. 88–90; Marcotte 1982–84, 1990: 145. Other proposed locations include Megara (Paus. 1.43.1)
and Amarynthos (Σ Ar. Av. 873): Selle 2008: 252–53. But neither well fits the detail of v. 12: Agamemnon’s
dedication in Megara is linked with the recruitment of Calchas, an earlier episode which accords poorly with the
inceptive or conative significance of the imperfect ἔπλεε. Callimachus also situates a dedication to Artemis at
Aulis: Agamemnon dedicated the rudder of his ship to the goddess “when she had checked the winds for him” as
the Achaean ships were similarly “about to sail” (ἔπλεον) to Troy (Hymn 3.228–32).

14
After all the hardship and suffering that she has caused, the appeased god thus assists the
Greeks in their voyage to the Trojan shore. Artemis transitions from obstructing the Greek cause
to actively supporting it.
69
II. REPLAYING IPHIGENIA: THE RETURN OF CHRYSEIS
Now that we have outlined the key elements of the Iphigenia fabula (summarized in Table 1), it is
time to turn to the Iliad and examine the reflections of this fabula in book 1. As we shall see, all
six elements are reflected in the same order in the opening phases of the poem.
Element
Details
(A) Agamemnon offends a deity and is
punished
Agamemnon angers Artemis (kills deer / boasts)
Suffers adverse storm and hardship [and plague?]
Risk of mission failure
(B) Calchas discloses divine
displeasure and proposes a solution:
Agamemnon must give up a prized
woman from his possession
Calchas reveals Artemis’s anger
Agamemnon must give up Iphigenia
[Agamemnon’s angry response?]
(C) Achilles loses a potential bride
Achilles loses Iphigenia
Achilles responds angrily to Agamemnon’s actions
(D) Odysseus collects and brings this
woman to her father by the altar
Odysseus brings Iphigenia to her father by the altar
(E) Sacrifice is performed at the altar
Agamemnon leads the sacrifice with Calchas
Attempted human sacrifice
(F) After the sacrifice, the Greeks
receive a favorable wind from the
offended deity and sail to Troy
Artemis sends a favorable wind
The Greek ships sail to Troy
Table 1. Core elements of the Iphigenia fabula.
69
Artemis’s pro-Trojan positioning in the Iliad does not impede this narrative detail. Other gods are similarly variable
in their acts of support and allegiance: e.g., Apollo sides with the Trojans despite the abuse he received from
Laomedon (Il. 21.441–60; Graf 2009: 10–13), yet he still assists the Greeks’ sailing in book 1 (see § II (F) below
with n116).

15
Before tracing this parallel sequence, however, it is worth facing head-on a possible
challenge to this thesis: the possibility that the Iphigenia story was not known to the Homeric
tradition.
70
This is an issue that has been discussed before, but it is worth revisiting briefly given
how crucial it is for my larger argument. It is true that the Iliad lacks any direct mention of
Iphigenia, and to at least some scholars her sacrifice seems incompatible with Agamemnon’s list
of three marriageable daughters in book 9: Chrysothemis, Laodice and Iphianassa (Il. 9.145, 287).
The final name, Iphianassa, has been considered an alternative or substitute for Iphigenia, a
possibility that receives support from the apparent flexibility of the sacrificed daughter’s name
elsewhere: she is called Iphimede in the Hesiodic Catalogue (Hes. fr. 23a.17 M-W), Iphigone in
Euripides’ Electra (El. 1023), and Iphianassa in Lucretius (1.85).
71
On this interpretation, if
“Iphianassa” is still alive and available in the tenth year of the war, the sacrifice (or attempted
sacrifice) cannot have taken place.
However, this logic is complicated by the evidence of the Cypria, which preserves a
tradition in which Agamemnon had four daughters, the three of the Iliad plus Iphigenia (fr. 20
GEF = Σ Soph. El. 157). Some scholars suppose that this is simply a post-Homeric attempt to
reconcile the Iliad with the sacrifice tradition,
72
but this is far from certain. Undoubtedly, the
Cypria’s additional daughter “looks like an attempt to synthesize variants,”
73
but there is no reason
that such synthesis could not have occurred in tradition prior to the Iliad.
74
After all, similar-
sounding names of royal siblings are paralleled elsewhere in early Greek epic by three of
Metaneira’s daughters in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Callidice, Clisidice and Callithoe, 109–
10); such duplications were evidently not offensive to an ancient ear.
75
Moreover, the independent
existence of both Iphigenia and Iphianassa is in no way inconsistent with—and could even be
presupposed by—Agamemnon’s claim in book 9. Now that Iphigenia is dead (or whisked away to
Tauris), it makes sense that Agamemnon only names his three surviving (or available) daughters
as potential wives for Achilles (Il. 9.144–48).
76
Indeed, if anything, the shadow of Iphigenia’s
sacrifice only enriches our appreciation of this tense moment: if we recall that Agamemnon had
70
This was apparently the view of Aristarchus, as preserved in the Homeric scholia: Σ A. Il. 1.108–9b; cf. Σ A Il.
9.145a (ὅτι οὐκ οἶδε τὴν παρὰ τοῖς νεωτέροις σφαγὴν Ἰφιγενείας, “because he does not know the slaughter of
Iphigenia from the later poets”); Σ T Il. 1.106b (τὸ γὰρ Ἰφιγενείας ὄνομα οὐδὲ οἶδεν ὁ ποιητής, “for the poet
does not know the name of Iphigenia”). See Severyns 1928: 295–98; Currie 2016: 124n115; Schironi 2018: 666.
71
Cf. the variation in the name of Oedipus’s mother/wife (Epicaste/Jocasta) and the apparent identity of Homer’s
“Laodice” and the daughter whom the tragedians call “Electra”: Σ D Il. 9.145. Xanthus claims that Laodice was
renamed Electra when she grew old “unwedded” (ἄλεκτρον, 700 PMG). Cf. Eur. Or. 22–23, where Electra
specifies three daughters: Chrysothemis, Iphigenia and herself.
72
Willcock 1978–84: I 273 on 9.144–45; Hainsworth 1993: 77 on 9.145.
73
Currie 2015: 292.
74
Cf. Kullmann 1965; Burgess 2001: 150–51; Currie 2015: 291–92. The Cypria’s variant is later followed in
Sophocles’ Electra, where Iphianassa is a separate sister who is still alive (ζώει) long after Iphigenia’s death (El.
157, pace Davidson 1990). The assumption that the Cypria’s version responds directly to the Iliad falls foul of the
documentary fallacy WYSIATI (“What you see is all there is”): cf. Kelly 2015: 22, who adopts this acronym from
Kahneman 2011 and criticizes the “temptation to connect our surviving texts and to neglect the thousands of lines
and hundreds of poems which must have existed in the earliest period.”
75
Thus Burgess 2001: 150. Cf. Richardson 1974: 184–85 and Lyons 1997: 51–58 on the “naming of heroines.”
76
Thus March 1987: 85n30; Currie 2015: 292.

16
previously “offered” Achilles another of his daughters at Aulis, the unfulfilled and unhappy nature
of that “marriage” foreshadows how poorly this offer will go down in the present (cf. Il. 9.388–
400). Most significantly, however, the sacrifice seems to be presupposed earlier in the Iliad by
Agamemnon’s scathing rebuke of the seer Calchas (Il. 1.105–8):
Κάλχαντα πρώτιστα κάκ᾿ ὀσσόμενος προσέειπε·
“μάντι κακῶν, οὐ πώ ποτέ μοι τὸ κρήγυον εἶπας·
αἰεί τοι τὰ κάκ᾿ ἐστὶ φίλα φρεσὶ μαντεύεσθαι,
ἐσθλὸν δ᾿ οὔτε τί πω εἶπας ἔπος οὔτ᾿ ἐτέλεσσας.
First of all he spoke to Calchas with a menacing glare: “Prophet of evil, never yet have you
told me anything good. It is always dear to your heart to prophesy evil, and never yet have
you said a good word or brought it to fulfillment.”
This outburst fits with Agamemnon’s broader characterization in Iliad 1; indeed, he later criticizes
Achilles in similar terms (1.177). But his emphasis on Calchas’s repeated behavior presupposes a
broader history of bad blood between the pair (note especially the string of temporal adverbs: οὐ
πώ ποτε, “never yet,” 106; αἰεί, “always,” 107; οὔτε τί πω, “never yet,” 108). Some ancient
scholars understood a reference here to Calchas’s prophecy that Troy would only be sacked after
ten years, which is certainly a possibility.
77
But this alone does not seem to account for the
emotional hyperbole of Agamemnon’s rebuke. Moreover, the generality of Agamemnon’s
temporal adverbs suggests that he has more than one moment in mind here. It is thus very likely
that this reproach also points to Iphigenia’s sacrifice, the other major past occasion on which
Calchas gave Agamemnon some terrible news.
78
We have already noted that the Iphigenia story is found in many other archaic texts,
including the Cypria, the Hesiodic Catalogue and Stesichorus’s Oresteia, which strongly implies
that it was already firmly embedded in archaic mythological lore. But we can further add that the
tale is also integral to the larger plot and narrative of the Trojan war, which makes it even more
unlikely to be a late post-Homeric accretion. Not only does it play a key structural role—initiating
the war with a sacrificed daughter, mirroring the sacrifice of Polyxena at its close
79
—but it also
serves as a major motivation for Clytemnestra’s later murder of her husband (cf. Pyth. 11.22–23).
77
Σ bT Il. 1.106b. Odysseus presents Calchas’s ten-year revelation favorably in the next book (Il. 2.301–32), but
specifically in an attempt to stop the Greeks from leaving Troy (2.299–300), and even he admits how difficult the
long campaign has been (2.291–98).
78
Cf. Eust. Il. 59.42–46 = 1.95.21–26 van der Valk. This interpretation is widely accepted by modern scholars: e.g.,
Zieliński 1925: 242–43; Clément 1934: 394; Kullmann 1960: 198–99, 267–68, 2001: 395–96; Kirk 1985: 65 on
Il. 1.108; Dowden 1989: 12, 1996: 53; Taplin 1992: 86; Lübeck 1993: 3–4; M. Clark 1998: 21–22; Pulleyn 2000:
156–57; Bouvier 2002: 305–8; Draper 2002: 52; Radif 2002: 47–48; Barker 2009: 43–45; Jensen 2009: 51; Latacz,
Nünlist and Stoevesandt 2009: 66; West 2011: 86; Porter 2019: 111; Schein forthcoming ad loc. Contrast Welcker
1865–82: II 144 n79; Davies 1991: xxi; Davies and Finglass 2014: 482.
79
Cf. Anderson 1997: 59–61. Given the centrality of doublets to the construction of archaic epic and myth, it is likely
that this Iphigenia-Polyxena parallel has an archaic pedigree.

17
The Odyssey is already familiar with Clytemnestra’s adultery, suggesting that the whole family
drama was well established at an early date.
80
And indeed, Agamemnon immediately follows his
rebuke of Calchas in Iliad 1 with an unflattering assessment of his wife (1.112–15), hinting at the
marital discord that arose from his daughter’s sacrifice. The same unease may also be reflected in
Chryses’ pointed failure to appeal to Agamemnon’s familial piety in his opening supplication (a
common ploy in other supplication scenes: Il. 15.659–66, 22.338–43, 24.485–87, 503–4; Od.
11.66–68). With Iphigenia’s sacrifice in the background, Agamemnon’s paternal love is not an
effective thing to appeal to.
81
Finally, Homer’s direct avoidance of the myth fits with the Iliad’s
more general suppression of immortalization and killing within the family. In keeping with the
poem’s larger aesthetic priorities, the Iphigenia narrative is transplanted to the domain of indirect
and allusive reference.
82
Like many scholars, therefore, I believe that the Iphigenia story belonged to the wider mass
of traditions and tales against which the Iliad situated itself. But rather than seeing the Iliad’s
allusion to this story restricted primarily to Agamemnon’s brief rebuke of Calchas, I contend that
the fabula of the sacrifice underlies the whole opening of the poem. Agamemnon’s words are not
an isolated allusion, but rather a signpost to the wider motif transference at work in book 1. I shall
now trace this Iliadic reframing of the Iphigenia fabula, following the same lettered sequence as
above. As we shall see, the Iliad mirrors the overarching Iphigenia sequence, but also reworks and
distorts it at specific points—divergences that we shall consider further in section III.
(A) Agamemnon offends a deity and is punished
The Iliad begins with Agamemnon angering Apollo by dishonoring his priest Chryses, refusing to
return his captive daughter Chryseis in exchange for an abundant ransom (1.8–42). As punishment,
the god inflicts a plague on the Achaeans, disrupting the war effort and causing much suffering
(1.43–52).
This whole episode closely parallels Agamemnon’s offense against Artemis. Like at Aulis,
the king hubristically offends a god of archery by both boasting and disrespecting what is sacred
to him or her (Artemis’s deer / Apollo’s priest: cf. ἠτίμασεν ἀρητῆρα, 1.11).
83
He brusquely
80
Cf. Kirk 1985: 127 on Il. 2.101–8, supposing that Homer also knew the Atreus/Thyestes quarrel (another topic of
scholiastic debate: see n82 below).
81
Thus M. Clark 1998: 22–23.
82
Thus e.g., Griffin 1977: 44; Davies 1989: 44; Seaford 1989; Aretz 1999: 49–50; Scodel 2012: 509; Davies and
Finglass 2014: 484. Compare ancient debates over whether Homer knew of the conflict between Atreus and
Thyestes: Aristarchus considered Homer ignorant of the tale (<οὐ> γινώσκει τὴν ἔχθραν Ἀτρέως καὶ Θυέστου,
Σ A Il. 2.106a), whereas Licymnius believed that the poet was aware of the conflict but suppressed it “to avoid
blaming the family,” instead offering only a “hidden hint” (Λικύμνιος δὲ παραδηλοῦσθαί φησι τὴν ἔχθραν
λεληθότως, ἵνα μὴ βλασφημήσῃ τὸ γένος, Σ bT Il. 2.106b); cf. Danek 2010: 227. Compare too the Odyssey’s
suppression of Orestes’ matricide (Alden 2017: 84–85 with n34) and perhaps also of Telegonus’s patricide (Arft
2019).
83
Achilles’ later criticism of Agamemnon’s “deer-heart” (κραδίην δ’ ἐλάφοιο, 1.225) may even subtly recall his
original crime at Aulis (cf. ἔλαφον, Cypr. arg. 8 GEF); it is the only occasion in the poem where ἔλαφος is directly
applied to a person (cf. Beck 2005: 216–17).

18
dismisses Chryses (κακῶς ἀφίει, 1.25), threatening him with violence (1.28, 32) and
blasphemously disregarding the emblems of his office (the scepter and fillet, 1.28).
84
In addition,
he gloatingly describes how Chryseis will share his bed in Argos (1.29–31), a malicious boast that
Aristarchus even athetized as “unseemly” in the mouth of a king (ἀπρεπές, Σ A Il. 1.29–31).
Agamemnon impiously dismisses Apollo’s divine authority, just as he had Artemis’s at Aulis. The
king, it seems, has not learned from his previous transgression. Indeed, Achilles’ claim that
Agamemnon does not know how to look to the past or the future (Il. 1.343) could be taken as an
implicit gesture to his failure to learn from past mistakes.
85
The consequences of Agamemnon’s conduct are also parallel. Apollo grows angry, just
like his sister (χολωθείς 1.9; χωόμενος 1.44; χωομένοιο 1.46; ἐχώσατο 1.64; μῆνιν 1.75; cf.
μηνίσασα, Cypr. arg. 8 GEF). And he enacts an analogous punishment: the plague (νοῦσον ...
κακήν, 1.10; λοιμός, 1.61; λοιγόν, 1.67, 97, 456) is a similarly violent upheaval of the natural
world to Artemis’s storm winds, causing anguish (ἄλγεα, 1.96, 110) and delay to the Greeks’
project.
86
Indeed, as Achilles goes on to say, the Greeks are “driven back” by this plague
(παλιμπλαγχθέντας) and risk having to abort the whole expedition and “return home”
(ἀπονοστήσειν), the same threat of mission failure that faced them at Aulis (Il. 1.59–61).
87
Moreover, there is an underlying symmetry between this punishment and Agamemnon’s previous
crime: Apollo’s punitive archery (1.48–52) echoes and inverts Agamemnon’s foolhardy deer
hunting.
Of course, it could be argued that these two episodes are simply two manifestations of a
common story pattern found in Homer onwards: that of an arrogant mortal offending a deity and
suffering as a result.
88
Indeed, Apollo and Artemis appear to have been particularly suitable for
this kind of revenge pattern.
89
But in this instance, the similarities extend beyond the typological
norm, especially since the same mortal is at fault in each case. Moreover, the two offended deities
form a natural brother-sister pair, reinforcing the correspondence between the two incidents—in
both cases, Agamemnon offends a child of Leto. Homer’s initial emphasis on Apollo’s descent
from Leto (1.9, 1.36) even foregrounds this familial connection at the outset.
90
In addition to the
84
These emblems had already been foregrounded in Homer’s initial introduction of Chryses, as the climax of a rising
tricolon (1.13–15): Kakridis 1971: 125–26. This opening emphasis on Chryses’ priestly status renders
Agamemnon’s ensuing hostility all the more culpable.
85
Cf. Griffin and Hammond 1982: 132–33 on Agamemnon’s “triumphant egotism” and Faraone 2016: 405–10 on
Agamemnon as theomachos.
86
This parallel would have been even stronger if plagues were already associated with changes in wind and air, as
they were later in Hippocratic medicine (e.g., Jouanna 2012). For the larger significance of this plague in the Iliad,
see Blickman 1987.
87
παλιμπλάζομαι is itself evocative of adverse sailing, like at Aulis (cf. παλιμπλαγχθέντα, Od. 13.5).
88
Cf. Thamyris and the Muses, Il. 2.594–600; Oeneus and Artemis, Il. 9.533–42; Niobe and Leto, Il. 24.602–9;
Oilean Ajax and Poseidon, Od. 4.502–11; Eurytus and Apollo, Od. 8.226–28; Phorbas and Apollo, Aeth. fr. 4 GEF
(cf. Sammons 2017: 190n44).
89
Cf. Faraone 1992: 59–66; Carpenter 1994: 67–70.
90
Callimachus later picks up on this brother/sister parallel in his description of Artemis’s punishment of the unjust
with arrows and pestilence (Hymn 3.117–28), which closely echoes Apollo’s behavior from Iliad 1: Stephens 2015:
137–39.

19
underlying symmetry between Agamemnon’s hunting and Apollo’s archery, these parallels thus
establish the Iphigenia fabula as an underlying paradigm and foil for the Iliad’s opening,
inaugurating—as we shall now see—a whole series of narrative interconnections.
(B) Calchas discloses divine displeasure and proposes a solution: Agamemnon must give up
a prized woman from his possession
After nine days of Greek suffering, the Iliad continues with an assembly initiated by Achilles, who
proposes that they ask a prophet about the cause of Apollo’s anger (1.53–67). In response, the seer
Calchas—after seeking reassurance and protection from Achilles—reveals that Apollo is angry
with Agamemnon for his mistreatment of Chryses and will not relent until Chryseis is returned
with a full hecatomb (1.68–100). Agamemnon reacts furiously, rebuking Calchas, but ultimately
agrees to follow his instructions (1.101–17).
Here too, events map closely onto those at Aulis. In both cases, the divinely induced
impasse is explained by the seer Calchas, and the solution which he proposes involves
Agamemnon giving up a prized woman from his possession—his war-slave Chryseis and his
daughter Iphigenia. This parallel is particularly striking; on no other occasion in myth is
Agamemnon required to give anything up to appease a god, let alone a prized woman. Moreover,
Chryseis and Iphigenia are similar figures, each primarily defined and identified through her
relationship to her father.
91
In the Iliad, however, Homer has split Calchas’s solution at Aulis into
two: the sacrifice of Iphigenia here becomes Agamemnon’s loss of Chryseis and a separate
sacrificial hecatomb—though Achilles’ later instruction that Agamemnon “give this girl up to the
god” (and not “her father”: σὺ μὲν νῦν τήνδε θεῷ προές, 1.127) could equally hint that Chryseis
will be dedicated and entrusted to Apollo, just as Iphigenia was to Artemis.
Calchas’s prominence in this episode is also significant. This is his only direct appearance
in the Iliadic narrative, and he is only otherwise mentioned twice elsewhere: in Iliad 2 when
Odysseus recalls his interpretation of the snake omen at Aulis (2.299–332) and again in Iliad 13
when Poseidon adopts his form as a mortal disguise (13.43–45).
92
From these mentions and
Proclus’s summaries, it is clear that Calchas is primarily associated in tradition with events at
Aulis.
93
His very presence here at the outset of the poem would encourage an audience to recall
his major previous contribution.
In addition, the Iliad assembly scene may even nod to Agamemnon’s original offense at
Aulis when Achilles suggests possible reasons for Apollo’s anger: he wonders whether Apollo
91
Chryseis’s name is a patronymic, while her double description as a κούρη (1.98, 111) foregrounds her status as a
daughter (cf. Dué 2002: 52–55 for the noun’s traditional resonance). Iphigenia’s key mythical role is determined
by her status as Agamemnon’s daughter.
92
The Aulis episode in Iliad 2 relates to the other gathering at Aulis, mentioned in Proclus’s Cypria summary before
the Teuthranian expedition (arg. 6 GEF; the Iphigenia Aulis episode features after it: arg. 8 GEF). These allusions
to the two different Aulis episodes in consecutive books of the Iliad (the first implicit, the second explicit) could
perhaps be taken to presuppose Homeric awareness of the Teuthranian expedition.
93
Taplin 1992: 86n9 attractively suggests that even Poseidon’s choice of Calchas in Iliad 13 may recall Aulis, since
“he rallies the Achaians in terms that do Agamemnon no credit” (cf. 13.111–13).

20
“find faults with a εὐχωλή or a hecatomb” (εἴτ’ ἄρ’ ὅ γ’ εὐχωλῆς ἐπιμέμφεται εἴθ’ ἑκατόμβης,
1.65). This line is most naturally understood to refer to a prayer or sacrifice which the Greeks have
either omitted or wrongly performed.
94
But εὐχωλή, like its associated verb εὔχομαι, is a
polyvalent noun which can refer to a “boast” as much as a “prayer.” In fact, the vast majority of
the noun’s Iliadic instantiations have this precise sense of a “boast” or “vaunt.”
95
Its presence here
alongside ἑκατόμβη inevitably foregrounds the meaning of “prayer,” but Achilles’ words may still
hint at the possibility that Agamemnon’s crime results, as before, from an arrogant boast.
Ultimately, Calchas goes on to dismiss Achilles’ suggestion (1.93), but the raised possibility
invites a further connection with the earlier episode.
96
Finally, we may also suspect that Agamemnon’s outburst of fury against Calchas’s
revelation resembles his response at Aulis. We have already seen how the king’s opening words
invite an audience to recall Calchas’s previous prophecy, looking back to an earlier occasion on
which the seer had offered unwelcome advice (1.106–8), but the virulent character of these words
also likely replays the king’s earlier reaction.
97
Indeed, Calchas’s expectation that he will anger a
mighty king and cause lasting resentment (1.78–83) is likely based on his previous experience at
Aulis.
(C) Achilles loses a potential bride
After Agamemnon has agreed to return Chryseis, he asks for a replacement γέρας (“war-prize”)
and threatens to confiscate that of another leader if he does not have his way (1.118–47). When
Achilles objects, Agamemnon narrows his threat: he will take Achilles’ own γέρας, Briseis
(1.148–87). The escalating quarrel is eventually quelled—or at least deferred—through the
interventions of Athena and Nestor, and Achilles reluctantly agrees to give up Briseis (1.188–307).
After the assembly disperses, preparations begin to appease Apollo (1.308–17); Agamemnon sends
his heralds to collect Briseis from Achilles (1.318–48); and Achilles summons his mother,
complains about what has happened and asks her to supplicate Zeus on his behalf (1.349–430).
This section of Iliad 1 exhibits the least direct mapping onto the Aulis episode, as it begins
to turn our attention to the larger consequences of Agamemnon’s conduct, especially Achilles’
withdrawal, an event which determines the trajectory of the whole poem. Yet even so, here too the
Iphigenia episode resonates meaningfully in the background, now centered on the figure of Briseis:
94
Cf. Kirk 1985: 60; Pulleyn 2000: 143; Draper 2002: 44; Latacz, Nünlist and Stoevesandt 2009: 52.
95
Beyond Il. 1.65 and 1.93, the word is used of verbal boasting (8.229), a cry of triumph (4.450 = 8.64), and the
source of a boast (2.160 ~ 2.176 ~ 4.173; 22.433). Only at Il. 9.499 does it refer to a “vow” or “prayer” (although
this usage is attested in other epics: Od. 11.34, 13.357; Hes. Scut. 68). For the various meanings of εὔχομαι, see
Muellner 1976.
96
For this framing of another tradition in hypothetical terms, cf. Il. 11.794–97 ~ 16.36–39, where Nestor and
Patroclus raise the possibility that Achilles has been forewarned by Thetis. Like Calchas, Achilles dismisses the
possibility (16.50–51). This seems to acknowledge but negate an episode familiar from the Aethiopis in which
Thetis does foretell Achilles’ fate (προλέγει, arg. 2b GEF; cf. Currie 2006: 30, 2016: 62), which the Iliad
allusively replays in Achilles’ following warning to Patroclus (Burgess 2009: 75–76).
97
Cf. West 1979: 5 = West 2011–2013: II 221.

21
Achilles loses a potential bride through Agamemnon’s actions, just like at Aulis.
98
In Iliad 9, the
hero tells Odysseus that he loves Briseis from the depths of his heart (ἐγὼ τὴν | ἐκ θυμοῦ φίλεον,
9.342–43) and earlier in his speech he even equates her to Helen as his own ἄλοχον θυμαρέα
(“darling wife,” 9.336). This is a rare formulaic phrase, found only twice elsewhere in archaic
Greek epic of Penelope (Od. 23.232) and Mestra (Hes. fr. 43a.20 M-W), two women who were
sought after by many suitors.
99
Achilles presents Briseis as a desirable wife on a par with these
prominent personalities of the mythical tradition. Indeed, this resonant phrase is well chosen for
Achilles’ immediate addressee, Odysseus: Achilles implies that Briseis is his equivalent of
Penelope.
100
Achilles’ comments have often been dismissed as rhetorical exaggeration, simply designed
to elevate Briseis to the level of Menelaus’s Helen—especially since he later wishes that Artemis
had killed Briseis on the very day that he chose her as his prize (19.59–60), hardly the sentiments
of a doting lover.
101
But even this wish resonates pointedly with the Aulis episode (envisioning
Briseis as a victim of Artemis just like Iphigenia), and in context it too has its own rhetorical
purpose: heightening the pain and emotion that Achilles feels at the loss of Patroclus. Other
moments in the poem, by contrast, do in fact hint at the sincerity of Achilles’ feelings for Briseis:
after losing her in book 1, the hero withdraws from his companions in tears and sits on the shore
of the sea (1.348–50), a pose that the scholia recognize as that of a distraught lover.
102
Later in the
poem Briseis herself recalls how Patroclus had promised to make her Achilles’ “wedded wife”
(κουριδίην ἄλοχον) back in Phthia (19.297–99); the poem encourages us to see her as a potential
future bride for Achilles, just as Iphigenia was at Aulis.
103
Achilles’ loss of Briseis is thus
analogous to his unfulfilled “marriage” to Iphigenia. In both cases, Agamemnon and the army take
away what they had previously offered (cf. μ’ ἀφέλεσθέ γε δόντες, 1.299).
Achilles’ reaction to Agamemnon’s conduct also parallels that at Aulis. He responds
angrily (ὑπόδρα ἰδών, 1.148),
104
complaining of Agamemnon’s hubristic behavior (ὕβριν, 1.203;
ὑπεροπλίῃσι, 1.205; λωβήσαιο, 1.232; cf. ὕβριν ... ὕβρισ’, IA 961). He also verges once more
on violence: without Athena’s intervention, he would have drawn his sword against the king
(1.188–94, 205) and he still ends the conversation by threatening to spill Agamemnon’s blood
98
For the substitutability of Chryseis and Briseis, and their shared role as doublets of Iphigenia, see § III below.
99
Penelope’s suitors totaled one hundred and eight, with ten further attendants (Od. 16.245–53); Od. 23.232 derives
from her happy reunion with Odysseus. Mestra was sold to a whole series of husbands by her desperate father
Erysichthon (Hes. fr. 43a–c M-W; Rutherford 2005).
100
Cf. Taplin 1992: 214–15; Mitsis 2010: 55–56; Fantuzzi 2012: 108.
101
Hainsworth 1993: 106–7 on 9.336, 108 on 9.342; Griffin 1995: 114 on 9.336, 115 on 9.343; Fantuzzi 2012: 109–
13 and 99–185 more generally on the later tradition of Achilles and Briseis.
102
ἄκρως δὲ ἐρῶντα χαρακτηρίζει, “[Homer] perfectly characterizes the lover,” Σ bT Il. 1.349b; cf. Σ bT on 1.346
and Fantuzzi 2012: 102–5. Cf. Achilles’ similar responses to the death of Patroclus (Il. 24.3–13) and the
disappearance of Iphigenia in Lycophron’s Alexandra (188–95).
103
Cf. Dué 2002: 67–81 on Briseis’s adoption of the role of “lamenting wife” in Iliad 19, a role that she might have
also played after Achilles’ death (later, cf. Prop. 2.9.9–14; Quint. Smyrn. 3.551–81). See too Taplin 1992: 212–18
for the sincerity of Achilles’ feelings for Briseis.
104
For the resonance of ὑπόδρα ἰδών, cf. Holoka 1983. See too Friedrich 2002: 2–6 on the indignation expressed by
Achilles’ three untypical full-verse addresses to Agamemnon.

22
around his spear (1.302–3; cf. IA 970–72). Like at Aulis, Agamemnon has “completely deceived
and wronged” him (ἐκ γὰρ δή μ’ ἀπάτησε καὶ ἤλιτεν, 9.375; cf. 9.371, 375–76), and he responds
with similar venom. Indeed, Agamemnon may even subtly acknowledge this prior clash: he claims
that “strife is always dear” to Achilles, alongside wars and battles (αἰεὶ γάρ τοι ἔρις τε φίλη
πόλεμοί τε μάχαι τε, 1.177), a remark that—like his similarly phrased complaint about Calchas
(1.107)—could nod to this specific past conflict. If Achilles had indeed been caught up in the
crossfire of Agamemnon’s scheming at Aulis, that prior history of fraught relations adds extra
depth to their latest quarrel.
(D) Odysseus collects and brings this woman to her father by the altar
While Achilles complains to his mother, Chryseis is on her way back to her father. After the
assembly, we have already heard that the ship had set off with Odysseus as commander (1.308–
12), and now it reaches Chryse; after mooring the ship, the Greeks bring out the hecatomb for
Apollo, and Odysseus leads Chryseis to the altar and places her in the arms of her father, who
joyfully receives her (1.430–47).
These events closely correspond to the Aulis episode. There too, as we have seen,
Odysseus appears to have been traditionally responsible for bringing Iphigenia to her father, just
as he brings Chryseis to Chryses here.
105
The repeated emphasis on Odysseus’s central role at this
moment (1.311, 430, 440) invites an audience to recall the last time he played a similar role. The
repetition of the hero’s epithet πολύμητις (1.311, 440) may also foreground his capacity for
cunning, inviting us to recall the Aulian marriage trick.
106
Particularly suggestive of events at
Aulis, however, are the two verses describing the transfer of Chryseis to her father (1.440–41):
τὴν μὲν ἔπειτ᾽ ἐπὶ βωμὸν ἄγων πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεὺς
πατρὶ φίλῳ ἐν χερσὶ τίθει, καί μιν προσέειπεν·
Then Odysseus of many wiles led her to the altar, placed her in her dear father’s arms, and
spoke to him.
Taken out of context, these verses could just as well refer to events at Aulis as those at Chryse.
The altar is precisely where Iphigenia is delivered to Agamemnon (e.g., βωμῶ[ι], Hes. fr. 23a.18
M-W), and the vagueness of πατρί and τήν could evoke Agamemnon and Iphigenia as much as
Chryses and Chryseis. We might even wonder whether such language was used elsewhere in the
105
In his summary to his mother, Achilles claims that the Ἀχαιοί as a whole are sending Chryseis back (πέμπουσιν)
(1.389–90), a vagueness that matches Proclus’s Cypria summary (μεταπεμψάμενοι, arg. 8 GEF).
106
Of course, πολύμητις is a common formulaic epithet for Odysseus, occurring eighteen times in the Iliad alone.
But it is still significant that Homer avoids the metrically identical πτολίπορθος, “city-sacking,” which appears
in the same sedes elsewhere (Il. 2.278, 10.363; Od. 8.3, etc.) and would carry a rather different resonance here (cf.
Haft 1990: 48–50).

23
context of the Iphigenia fabula, redeployed here in a new but comparable context.
107
Such a
suggestion can only be speculation on available evidence, but it nevertheless highlights how
similar these two mythical scenarios are.
If the Agamemnon and Iphigenia episode does lie behind this scene as I suggest, however,
this moment really points up the difference between these events and those at Aulis. The father
here “joyfully” receives his “dear” daughter in a moment of happy reunion (ὁ δὲ δέξατο χαίρων
| παῖδα φίλην, 1.446–47, cf. φίλῳ, 1.441),
108
a stark contrast to events at Aulis, where
Agamemnon’s family is ultimately torn apart rather than reunited. Indeed, later descriptions of
events at Aulis emphasize the misery of this moment: in Iphigenia at Aulis, for example,
Agamemnon cries at his daughter’s arrival (650, 683–84) and later groans aloud when he sees her
led to the altar (ἀνεστέναξε, 1549), a foil to Chryses’ joy here.
109
We shall consider the larger
significance of these differences in the next section, but here we can note how the tragic frisson of
the Iphigenia episode is evoked but negated.
(E) Sacrifice is performed at the altar
As soon as Chryses has received his daughter, sacrifice is performed: the hecatomb is set up and
Chryses prays to Apollo (1.447–57); the slaughter and preparation of the sacrificial meat is
described in intimate detail (1.458–66); and the ritual concludes with feasting and singing (1.467–
74). Here too, these events follow the general pattern of the Aulis fabula. The immediate
transition from Chryseis’s return to the sacrifice mirrors the same sequence at Aulis, where
Iphigenia’s arrival immediately precipitates her sacrifice. Indeed, the enjambement in line 447
positions the “dear daughter” (παῖδα φίλην) and the “hecatomb” (ἱερὴν ἑκατόμβην) in close
proximity to one another, reinforcing the speed (ὦκα) with which the sacrifice is begun.
Chryses’ prominent role in the sacrifice matches that of the paternal Agamemnon and
priestly Calchas at Aulis, while his prayer to Apollo explicitly asks the god to “ward off loathsome
destruction from the Danaans” (Δαναοῖσιν ἀεικέα λοιγὸν ἄμυνον, 1.456), a very similar request
to that which would have been made to Artemis at Aulis. Here too, the sacrifice performs the same
function; indeed, the whole ritual is designed to “appease” the god (cf. ἱλάσκοντο, 1.472).
Of course, the ensuing sacrifice diverges significantly from that at Aulis: Chryseis is not
sacrificed to the god (or supernaturally saved). Yet there may still be some underlying resonances.
It is notable that this is the longest description of sacrifice in the whole of the Iliad, with a detailed
description of the ritual procedure (1.458–61):
110
107
Cf. Burgess 2012 for such “textless intertextuality.”
108
Homeric φίλος may sometimes act like a possessive adjective, but it can also convey affection and dearness: see
Hooker 1987; Robinson 1990; Langholf 2010; Pulleyn 2019: 125 on Od. 1.60.
109
Cf. too artistic representations where Agamemnon veils his face in dismay: e.g., LIMC s.v. Iphigeneia 4, 38 (cf. IA
1550). Chryses’ joy also serves here as a foil to Achilles’ loss of Briseis: Rabel 1988.
110
Cf. Edwards 1980: 21; Rabel 1990: 434. Only the sacrifice at Pylos in the Odyssey offers a longer version of this
type scene (Od. 3.418–76).

24
αὐτὰρ ἐπεί ῥ᾿ εὔξαντο καὶ οὐλοχύτας προβάλοντο,
αὐέρυσαν μὲν πρῶτα καὶ ἔσφαξαν καὶ ἔδειραν,
μηρούς τ᾿ ἐξέταμον κατά τε κνίσῃ ἐκάλυψαν
δίπτυχα ποιήσαντες, ἐπ᾿ αὐτῶν δ᾿ ὠμοθέτησαν.
When they had prayed and sprinkled the barley grains, they first drew back the [victims’]
heads and slaughtered [them] and skinned [them]; and they cut out the thigh-bones and
wrapped them in fat, folded double, and placed slices of raw meat on top of them.
These lines are formulaic building blocks of the sacrifice type scene, familiar from many other
iterations. But it is perhaps significant that we begin in verse 459 with a string of verbs that lack a
direct object, which has to be supplied by the larger context. This imprecision is not unique, but
for audiences who have recognized the underlying Iphigenia pattern, the extra semantic space
could invite them to recall Iphigenia’s own similar treatment at Agamemnon’s hands: the verb
ἔσφαξαν (1.459), in particular, resonates with the language regularly used of Iphigenia’s sacrifice
from Hesiod onwards.
111
Moreover, this whole verse only appears once elsewhere in archaic epic,
in the description of the sacrifice that precedes the Catalogue of Ships (1.459 = 2.422), an episode
that itself resonates strongly with the gathering of the host at Aulis.
112
Perhaps this language was
particularly associated with the Aulis episode in tradition. Whether or not this was the case,
however, it is clear that the sacrifice not only has the same goal as Agamemnon’s (removing the
divinely induced λοιγός), but also leaves space for us to recall the original slaughter of Iphigenia.
As with the preceding reunion of father and daughter, there is once more a significant difference
here: the (at least attempted) human sacrifice at Aulis is again defused, and we are instead
presented with an archetype of orderly, civilized sacrifice—a point to which we shall return.
(F) After the sacrifice, the Greeks receive a favorable wind from the offended deity and sail
to Troy
The day after the sacrifice, the Greeks receive a favorable wind from Apollo and set sail back to
the Greek camp (1.477–83). On their arrival, they drag the boat onto the shore, set props beneath
it and immediately disperse (1.484–87).
The outcome of the sacrifice is thus the same as at Aulis: the offended deity is appeased
and allows for smooth sailing. Of course, the favorable wind here is far more incidental to the
immediate plot than it was at Aulis, where fair weather was the main goal of the ritual. Yet this
111
Cf. σφάξαν (Hes. Cat. fr. 23a.17 M-W), σφαχθεῖσα (Pyth. 11.23), σφαζομέν[ην] (Simon. 315a.10 Poltera),
σφαγάς (Soph. El. 568), ἔσφαξεν (Eur. IT 8; cf. σφαγεῖσαν, 20), σφάγιον (IA 135; cf. ἐπὶ σφαγάς, 1548),
σφάγι᾽ (Or. 658), σφάζοντες, σφάζειν (Eur. fr. 857.2–3 TrGF), σφάγιον (Apollod. Epit. 3.21, cf. σφάζειν, 3.22),
σφαγιάσῃ (Σ A Il. 1.108–9b). On the meaning of σφάζω and its derivatives, see Casabona 1966: 155–96.
112
The second half of the line appears on only one further occasion at Od. 12.359 (καὶ ἔσφαξαν καὶ ἔδειραν).

25
only makes it all the more striking that Homer devotes so much attention to it here, with the Iliad’s
only proper account of seafaring (1.479–83):
τοῖσιν δ᾿ ἴκμενον οὖρον ἵει ἑκάεργος Ἀπόλλων·
οἱ δ᾿ ἱστὸν στήσαντ᾿ ἀνά θ᾿ ἱστία λευκὰ πέτασσαν,
ἐν δ᾿ ἄνεμος πρῆσεν μέσον ἱστίον, ἀμφὶ δὲ κῦμα
στείρῃ πορφύρεον μεγάλ᾿ ἴαχε νηὸς ἰούσης·
ἡ δ᾿ ἔθεεν κατὰ κῦμα διαπρήσσουσα κέλευθον.
And Apollo who works from afar sent them a favorable wind. They set up the mast and
spread the white sails, and the wind filled the belly of the sail. The dark waves hissed
loudly around the keel’s stem as the ship went: and it sped over the waves, accomplishing
its route.
By contrast, the poem makes no explicit statement that the plague has ended, despite it being the
embassy’s primary objective—an absence that seems to have troubled ancient commentators.
113
Its resolution is only implied by the passing comment that Apollo “heard” and thus “granted”
Chryses’ initial prayer (τοῦ δ’ ἔκλυε Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων, 1.457).
114
Conversely, the double
mention of wind (οὖρον, 1.479; ἄνεμος, 1.481) foregrounds an outcome of the sacrifice which
directly parallels that at Aulis: the appeased deity sends a favorable wind.
115
Such Apolline
involvement in the winds is very unusual: even in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, it is Zeus, not
Apollo, who sends a tailwind for the Cretan sailors (Διὸς οὔρῳ, 427; ἄνεμος ... ἐκ Διὸς αἴσης,
433). Apollo’s control of the winds in Iliad 1 thus departs significantly from his usual practice and
aligns him even more closely with the appeased Artemis of Aulis.
116
The envoys’ concluding actions also match what the Greeks would have done on their first
arrival to Asia Minor from Aulis: setting their ships up on props to preserve them (1.484–86). This
final element of the Chryseis story closes the replay of Iphigenia’s fabula at a structurally
significant moment, echoing the Greeks’ first arrival in Troy. The episode concludes at a moment
of transition and new beginning.
113
Some rationalize the absence by suggesting that Apollo’s wind would have dispersed the plague (Σ AbT Il. 1.479).
Others explain why the returned expedition does not report its success to Agamemnon: this would have been
obvious from the ending of the plague (Σ bT Il. 1.487).
114
Cf. West 1978: 334 on Op. 726: “κλυεῖν is the regular epic word for a god ‘hearing’ a prayer in the sense of heeding
it.”
115
This is the only favorable wind that features directly in the Iliadic narrative; the other two instances of οὖρος appear
in similes (Il. 7.5, 14.19): cf. Purves 2010: 329 with n17.
116
Like Artemis, Apollo’s support here also goes against his general pro-Trojan stance in the poem; cf. Faraone 2016:
401: “Apollo ... seems to forget about the ongoing war at Troy and reacts purely as a local deity.”

26
Iphigenia’s Sacrifice
Iliad 1
(A) Agamemnon
offends a deity and
is punished
Agamemnon angers Artemis
(kills deer / boasts)
Suffers adverse storm and
hardship [and plague?]
Risk of mission failure
Agamemnon angers Apollo
(insults priest / boasts)
Suffers adverse plague and
hardship
Risk of mission failure
(B) Calchas
discloses divine
displeasure and
proposes a
solution:
Agamemnon must
give up a prized
woman from his
possession
Calchas reveals Artemis’s anger
Agamemnon must give up
Iphigenia
[Agamemnon’s angry response?]
Calchas reveals Apollo’s anger
Agamemnon must give up
Chryseis
Agamemnon’s angry response
(C) Achilles loses a
potential bride
Achilles loses Iphigenia
Achilles responds angrily to
Agamemnon’s actions
Achilles loses Briseis
Achilles responds angrily to
Agamemnon’s actions
(D) Odysseus
collects and brings
this woman to her
father by the altar
Odysseus brings Iphigenia to her
father by the altar
Odysseus brings Chryseis to her
father by the altar
(E) Sacrifice is
performed at the
altar
Agamemnon leads the sacrifice
with Calchas
Attempted human sacrifice
Chryses leads the sacrifice
Proper orderly sacrifice
(F) After the
sacrifice, the
Greeks receive a
favorable wind
from the offended
deity and sail to
Troy
Artemis sends a favorable wind
The Greek ships sail to Troy
Apollo sends a favorable wind
The Greek ship sails to Troy
Table 2. The parallel sequences summarized.

27
III. THE ARCHITECTURE OF HOMERIC ALLUSION
The opening moves of the Iliad thus map closely onto the Iphigenia fabula. In the previous section,
we have established an underlying symmetry between the events of Iliad 1 and the traditional Aulis
story (summarized in Table 2). The debate over Chryseis and her eventual return to her father
replay and rework Iphigenia’s sacrifice through a sustained sequence of narrative connections.
Each reader will no doubt have found some correspondences more convincing than others. But
given the sheer accumulation of parallels and the shared overarching sequence, the overall
connection is difficult to deny.
117
In this final section, I want to move beyond this point-by-point
comparison and dwell on the larger significance of this allusive pattern: what does it add to our
understanding of Iliad 1 and to Homeric poetics more generally?
At one level, the allusive background of Iphigenia’s sacrifice adds further depth to the
opening scenes of the Iliad, reinforcing the characterization of key protagonists by echoing and
recalling their past behavior. Agamemnon, in particular, repeats the same hubristic actions as
before, angering both a god and Achilles. He has clearly not learned from his past mistakes.
Moreover, when we recall his own past losses as a parent, his maltreatment of Chryses appears
even more heartless. Against the shadow of tradition, Agamemnon emerges as a callous ruler.
More generally, Agamemnon’s fraught relationships with both Calchas and Achilles also
reverberate pointedly with their prior history. These opening scenes are not an isolated occurrence,
but rather a repeated—and repeatable—scenario. Indeed, Agamemnon’s complaint against
Calchas at 1.105–8 stresses this continuity (esp. αἰεί, “always,” 1.107); and Agamemnon goes on
in the next line to emphasize the parallel between Calchas’s past and present conduct: the seer is
behaving in the same way “now too” (καὶ νῦν, 1.109).
118
There is a strong sense of déjà vu as
events at Aulis are replayed on the Trojan shore. Agamemnon’s critique of Calchas signposts the
larger motif transference at work in book 1.
The parallel motifs are not only grounded in continuity, however. There is also significant
divergence, especially between the fathers Agamemnon and Chryses. As the sequence progresses
in the Iliad, we have noted an increasing contrast between the pair, as Chryses’ joyful reunion with
his daughter serves as a foil to Agamemnon’s past loss: Iphigenia’s tragic fate is defused and
reframed in a more positive light. As we noted above, this fits with the Iliad’s general downplaying
of human sacrifice and immortalization, reducing the supernatural elements of Iphigenia’s story to
a lingering shadow. But there may be more at stake here: the Iliad begins by implicitly distancing
itself from this prior tradition of (attempted) filicide and barbaric human sacrifice. The elaborately
described ritual at Chryse (1.458–74) becomes a programmatic archetype of proper, orderly
sacrifice, a demonstration of how sacrifice should be done and indeed will be done in the remainder
of the poem. Through its divergence from the Iphigenia story, the Iliad begins by underlining that
117
Some ancient readers certainly seem to have detected a connection between Iphigenia and Chryseis, perhaps in
response to the Iliad’s maneuvers. See Sophocles’ fragmentary Chryses, which includes a meeting of the two (frr.
726–30 TrGF). Iphigenia comes face-to-face with her allusive doublet.
118
For adverbial καί as a marker of allusive iteration, cf. Od. 11.618 (καὶ σύ: Odysseus ~ Heracles): Nelson
forthcoming a § IV.2.2.

28
it is not a tale of such perverted violence, but one which rather models proper ritual conduct for
Homer’s own audiences.
119
The comparison of Agamemnon and Chryses also highlights a further aspect of this parallel
sequence: the prominence within it of allusive doublets, whereby one traditional character’s role
is split between two different figures. The Agamemnon of the Iphigenia fabula is replayed in the
Iliad by both Agamemnon himself (abusing Calchas, losing a female possession) and Chryses
(facing the loss of a daughter, performing the sacrifice). Such doubling is also apparent in the
reworking of Iphigenia: she shares features in common with both Chryseis (a possession of
Agamemnon) and Briseis (a potential bride of Achilles). Such a lack of one-to-one mapping
between the mythical fabula and the Iliad could perhaps be thought to undermine my overall
argument for this allusive scheme, but such splitting of a single character’s fabula can be readily
paralleled in other cases of Homeric allusion. Elsewhere in the Iliad, both Diomedes and Ajax play
the role of the absent Achilles, while both Patroclus and Achilles allusively reflect later events of
Achilles’ own life and death.
120
Moreover, in the case of Chryseis and Briseis, the two are already
close doublets of each other: besides their onomastic similarity (each formed as a patronymic
adjective), both are war-prizes of prominent Greek warriors, captured in Achilles’ sack of Thebe
and Lyrnessus (1.366–69, 2.688–93), and both are described with a similar array of epithets,
especially καλλιπάρῃον (“fair-cheeked,” Chryseis: 1.143, 310, 369; Briseis: 184, 323, 346).
121
They are thus an apt pair to adapt and recalibrate different aspects of Iphigenia.
Overall, therefore, this Iphigenia pattern offers further insight into Homeric allusive
practice. In its totality, it serves as a parallel for the large-scale motif transference surrounding
Achilles’ death in the second half of the Iliad. As Jonathan Burgess has demonstrated, “many
transferred motifs concerning Achilles’ death ... occur in extended narrative patterns,” reworking
traditional sequences of narrative in order, a practice which he has plausibly grounded in archaic
modes of performance. Ancient rhapsodes and performers appear to have picked up a story in
sequence, a custom already reflected in the series of Demodocus’s songs in Odyssey 8.
122
The
Iphigenia pattern of book 1 parallels this phenomenon, complementing the closing Iliadic prolepsis
of Achilles’ death with an opening analepsis of Iphigenia’s sacrifice. In addition, it inaugurates a
whole series of retrospective replays of tradition in the following books, initiating an ongoing
allusive pattern.
123
Contrary to common scholarly assumptions, these analeptic echoes are active
from the very start of the poem.
119
I thank Elton Barker for encouraging me to pursue this line of thought. Cf. Barker 2009: 31–88 for a similar
“foundational” aspect to the assembly at the start of the Iliad. On the broader politics of sacrifice in early Greek
myth and poetry, see Stocking 2017 (who does not, however, mention Iphigenia).
120
Diomedes/Ajax: Louden 2006: 14–52. Patroclus/Achilles: Burgess 2009: esp. 93–97. Cf. too Currie 2016: 69–70
on Hector and Sarpedon both reflecting Memnon, and Antilochus and Patroclus both reflecting Antilochus.
121
Cf. Dué 2002: 42–43, 49–52; Ov. Rem. 475–76. The pairs’ “fair cheeks,” though a formulaic quality, might also
provide another link with Iphigenia (cf. λευκὴν ... παρηίδα, Eur. El. 1023).
122
Burgess 2009: 93–97 (quotation 94); cf. Burgess 2005. On Odyssey 8, cf. Ford 1992: 110–18. Cf. too Bachvarova
2018 on how this practice may influence Homeric plot construction.
123
Cf. n2 above.

29
However, the presence of this Iphigenia allusion at the very start of the Iliad also has a
greater significance for the structure of the whole poem. We should note that the Iphigenia myth
has a particularly inceptive aspect: the sacrifice is a key moment of beginning, initiating the
expedition against Troy. Of course, there are multiple important “beginnings” in the Trojan war
story (including the Judgement of Paris and Paris’s theft of Helen), but events at Aulis were crucial
for the commencement of the war itself and later tradition certainly considered the sacrifice an
important moment of beginning. Lucretius begins De rerum natura with a description of the
sacrifice (1.82–101), while Statius’s Achilleid, which promises to lead Achilles through the “whole
Trojan story” (tota ... Troia, 1.7), begins with the gathering of the Greeks at Aulis and may well
have continued in book 2 with Iphigenia’s sacrifice, as Alessandro Barchiesi has argued.
124
Such
an initiatory resonance also seems to be presupposed by Hesiod’s mention of Aulis as the starting
point of both his own voyage and that of the Achaeans in the Works and Days (650–53: see § I (A)
above), as well as the likely allusion to Aulis in one of the introductory hymns of the Theognidea,
framing the episode as a moment of beginning (11–14: see § I (F) above). In Iliad 1, then, Homer
similarly exploits the story’s introductory aspect, aligning the structure of his poem to that of the
larger war. By looking back to the sacrifice story, the start of the Iliad replays the start of the whole
Trojan war. The larger structure of the whole expedition is mapped onto the narrow contours of
our epic.
To conclude, I would like to suggest that this Iphigenia allusion is only the most extended
and elaborate instance of a broader allusive strategy at the start of the Iliad.
125
Homer’s opening
also looks to other major beginnings of the war. The proem’s “plan of Zeus” seems to evoke and
rework the foundational moment of the whole story: Zeus’s “plan” to relieve the overburdened
earth by destroying the race of heroes (familiar from the Cypria and Hesiodic Catalogue). Here
too, the Iliad looks back to this inaugural moment and incorporates it into its own beginning,
redirecting the god’s “plan” to focus specifically on Achilles’ wrath.
126
Similarly, at a more
thematic level, Agamemnon’s “theft” of Briseis also parallels Paris’s initial abduction of Helen,
another major catalyst of strife. Like the whole war, the Iliad begins with an episode of contested
124
Barchiesi 2020. Cf. too Lucan’s use of Aulin (Bellum civile 5.236), which has been interpreted as a reference “back
to what was the beginning—the very beginning—of it all, the Greek expedition against Troy” (Masters 1992: 149;
cf. Ahl 1976: 129).
125
I thank Justin Arft for encouraging me to explore this broader picture.
126
See Currie 2016: 1–4; Edmunds 2016; and already Kullmann 1955. The “plan of Zeus” recurs elsewhere (e.g., Od.
8.82, 11.297; Hom. Hymn Dem. 9; etc.) and so may be a traditional motif (cf. Allan 2008), but it is the proem’s
combination of other phrases relating to Zeus’s annihilation plan that makes the allusive connection attractive:
note especially Διὸς δ’ ἐτελείετο βουλή, Il. 1.5 = Cypr. fr. 1.7 GEF; πολλὰς δ’ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν
| ἡρώων, Il. 1.3–4 [n.b. κεφαλάς for ψυχάς, Σ bT Il. 1.3b1] ~ π]ολὰς Ἀΐδῃ κεφαλὰς ἀπὸ χαλκὸν ἰά[ει]ν |
ἀν]ῶν ώων, Hes. fr. 204.118–19 M-W; ἐρίσαντε, Il. 1.6 ~ ἔριν, Cypr. fr. 1.5 GEF. The mention of strife
(ἐρίσαντε, Il. 1.6) alongside Peleus (in the patronymic Πηληϊάδεω, Il. 1.1) might also evoke Strife’s original
intervention at the wedding of Thetis and Peleus (Cypr. arg. 1b GEF), another inaugural element in the larger
story.

30
“bride stealing.”
127
The start of the poem thus echoes and reworks multiple key “beginnings” of
the larger story: Zeus’s plan, the theft of Helen, and the sacrifice of Iphigenia.
With these various inceptive allusions, Iliad 1 is thus thoroughly integrated into the broader
analeptic replays of the poem’s first half, evoking and embracing the wider tradition. But more
than that, it also exhibits an alert self-awareness about its own place in that tradition. It was always
a challenge to commence an epic poem because there were so many different starting points
available—a challenge that is explicitly recognized in the Odyssey’s instruction for its Muse to
begin “from any point” (ἁμόθεν, Od. 1.10). The start of the Iliad equally faces up to this challenge,
but comes to a rather different solution: it legitimizes its opening by incorporating and reworking
the war’s earlier major starting points. In a way, the Iliad is restarting the song of the Trojan War,
and to do so most effectively, it both acknowledges and appropriates multiple other beginnings.
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